Girls Weekend in Belfast!

As two girls on my netball team are from the North and studied in Belfast, our team decided that we would go on a girls weekend up there for a bit of drinking, sight-seeing and shopping. Lorraine used to work at the Hilton up there so we were lucky enough to get mates rates for the two nights in Executive rooms.

We drove up on Friday night, checked in, and went straight out to hit the Belfast nightlife. Our club of choice that night was the 'M Club' which not only plays 70s and 80s disco music but has funky dancers showing us how to do the moves and a dance-off! It was fantastic! The DJ picks out three people on the dance-floor who he thinks are pulling good moves and then clears the dance-floor so that the three contestants can have 60 seconds to pull all their moves. The crowd then votes for who should win by cheering. It is great fun! However, we were extra specially entertained this night by one of the contestants actually throwing up on the dance-floor after pulling some very enthusiastic moves! According to the DJ that is the first time that has ever happened in a dance-off there! The crowd proceeded to cheer the loudest for that contestant though so that she won the bottle of champagne - however I am sure that she didn't need any more alcohol by that point!

The following day was a slow start with a delicious and relaxing breakfast. I then managed to convince the staff in the hotel bar to put the rugby on for us while we sipped our drinks and those uninterested parties read the paper.

At 1pm we met Lorraine and headed off on a City Bus Tour which took us all around the city showing us the sights. Belfast is quite a pretty city and with the warm sunny weather that day we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves on the open-top bus. We saw monuments such as the new 'thing with the ring' (as our tour guide called it) - a sculpture of a girl with a ring that has been erected recently to represent peace but does not yet have a name, the Albert clock that leans ever so slightly due to bad foundations and Helen's favourite: the Big Fish. We were also taken around the dodgier areas in the past - Shankill Road, Crumlin Road, and Falls Road where a large number of murders have occured during the troubles. The murals and flags still mark the loyalist and republican territories in these areas and some of the buildings still show signs of the bombings that have taken place. A few other interesting sights we saw were the Odyssey Arena, home to the ice-hockey team the 'Belfast Giants', the area where the Titanic was built, and two ugly looking structures that have been part of the Belfast skyline for so long that they have preservation orders on them.



After the tour we stopped off at the 'Factory Bar' for a late lunch where Helen got to pour her own pint and they served HUGE pies (in a pot) and 'chip buttys'... yum yum yum! Feeling very full we hit the shops for a while to take advantage of the cheaper prices in Northern Ireland...



That night we went out for dinner at a yummy Chinese restaurant called the Dragon Rendevous before hitting the town once more. This time we headed to the 'Duke of York' pub/club where we drank and danced the night away meeting all kinds of interesting people - some nice and some not so nice. When the Duke closed at 1.30pm (as all clubs do in Belfast), we walked back to the hotel, stopping off to visit the Big Fish and a statue of a shepherd and his sheep for a few photo opportunities. We weren't quite ready to go to bed when we got back to the hotel though so we sat in the lobby with a few more drinks and chatted away. It was here that we were then treated to the second most entertaining sight of our weekend: a naked man holding nothing but a tiny white cloth (about face-cloth size)over his privates strolling into the hotel through the main front doors and making his way to the lifts where he presumably went up to his room. Where he came from and what happened to his clothes we don't know but it was interesting to note that the hotel staff hardly batted an eyelid - obviously used to strange things like this happening all the time!



The next day we were exhausted (having not got to bed until at least 5pm for most of us) so we headed off back down to Dublin shortly after another huge breakfast, tired but having enjoyed ourselves immensely!

Big thanks to Lorraine who organised the entire weekend for us and to Helen and Sharon who drove us there and back!! Go Team Getnvolved! :-)