As I mentioned we were in Belfast last weekend.

It is remarkable how quickly one can make the journey from Kilkenny to Belfast now that the motorway network is nearing completion: I think it took us little more than three hours, driving-time, door to door.

We stayed in the iconic Europa Hotel.

Sue, when she was booking, was told that all rooms had a view of Cave Hill which overhangs west Belfast and which, unbeknownst to themselves, many will all have seen as a backdrop on TV, to the innumerable news stories that emanated from that area during the Northern troubles.

However, this was the view from our bedroom widnow!

But if you stuck your head out you could see this.

Belfast's Opera House, one of the city's many, many, Victorian, architectural gems, is situated on the corner of Great Victoria Street and Glengall Street.
Next door to it on Glengall Street was the HQ of the Ulster Unionist Party and - as you can see - the Europa is its next door neighbour on Great Victoria Street.

The Europa, as one of Belfast's first high-rise buildings, and the Ulster Unionist HQ were both, for obvious reasons, targets that regularly attracted the attentions of the 'bombers'.

The Opera House was damaged but remarkably, and thankfully, it survived.

We drove up on Friday evening, had an excellent dinner in the Mourne Seafood Bar which is next door to, the equally iconic, Kelly's Cellars bar on Bank Street.

We spent Saturday walking and walking the streets of downtown and Laganside Belfast.

The Albert Clock on Albert Square.

When I lived in Belfast in the late 1960's shipbuilding was just coming to its end as Belfast's raison d'etre.

There was a shop on Albert Square, William Doig, that stocked every conceivable paint, lacquer, oil, pigment, stain, size and all the necessary equipment required for wood finishing, which trade was central to the luxury liners, not least the Titanic, that were built in Belfast.
To me it was a fascinating paradise.

And in the tiny streets of equally tiny artisan dwellings in East Belfast, where the shipyard workers lived, the doors of the houses were, many of them, a competition in wood-finishes. - I vividly remember, and vivid is the word, fantastic wood-graining done in lilac, lime-green and scarlet!

I'm not sure but I think this pub was where Doig's shop was.

And not far away, on Church Lane, is William McMaster's toolshop.
I didn't go in on this visit but when I lived in Belfast it was a truly specialist toolshop.

I remember, I had been in McMasters and was driving onto High Street from Church Lane when one of the first car-bombs, that became such a ghastly feature of Belfast life, and indeed claimed so many lives, exploded to my left on High Street. Its shock moved my car sideways.

And we wandered on.

As I said, there remain in Belfast many wonderful and extraordinary Victorian buildings.
It would be foolish to say that they nestle into the modern streetscapes because they are such bold and exagerated statements of architecural extravagance that they stand out and shout 'power and wealth' at you.

Unfortunately I did not take shots of them on this walkabout but I will on our next visit.

This amused me as an architectural oddity.

And at the top of Royal Avenue is this 1930's Bank of Ireland - now empty.

The primary purpose of our visit to Belfast was for Sue to collect an award, on behalf of KCLR, the radio station where she works, for the best use of the Irish language of all of the independent radio stations on the island.

This had Sue, on our way up in the car, teaching me Irish words of greeting so that I would better aquit myself at the awards ceremony.

The ceremony was held at a dinner in Belfast City Hall and, beforehand, we were given a guided tour of the building as gaeilge, a first in this bastion of Unionism and loyalism.

Back in 1968 I had a little 'junk shop' on Hope Street.
Hope Street was then a short street of small shops between Sandy Row and Great Victoria Street.
Unfortunately the buildings are no more but my little shop was beside a sweet manufacturer (Smiths I think) which made 'yellow man'.
Yellow man was a sweetmeat peculiar to Belfast and was like chunks of the inside of a Crunchy Bar.

And at the end of Hope Street is the beginning of Sandy Row one of the foremost bastions of working class protestantism and Orangeism in the city.
And peace process or no peace process, they don't mince their words!

I walked up Sandy Row, had a pint in the 'Cobbles' on Bradbury Place, where I drank regularly back then, and afterwards went in search of the house I lived in on Ashburne Street, just off Dublin Road.

Sadly it too was gone but its name has been remembered in the redevlopment.

We really enjoyed our visit to Belfast and I liked my trip down memory lane and wandering in places that had been my stamping ground as a young man.