Belfast, Northern Ireland 28.02.26

 Travel Day - Saturday 28.02.2026 to Belfast

Quick weekend trip to Belfast this weekend, early morning flight to Belfast from London Luton today, this time we parked at the Airport parkway and got the Dart to the airport which was actually really easy and cheap! just £6.10 to park and £9 return on the dart, so cheaper than parking in the airport parking. We arrived in Belfast at about 08.15, and jumped on the Bus to the city centre. We got to our Hotel (Ibis budget hotel) , dropped our bags and went out as it was too early to check in at that time. The weather was blue skies and sunny so we decided to go straight to the titanic museum and get that done today rather than rushing to do it in the morning. We walked into the centre and again jumped on the bus, tickets were £5 each and lasted all day which was handy as we then used that for the other plans we had which was going to the footie.

The tour was really interesting, so much to see and so much to read but was well worth it, certainly somewhere you have to visit whilst in Belfast. We found a few Gills on the titanic list that we need to look into as we want to see if any are related to Chris somewhere down the line.

Once we finished at the museum we got the bus back to the hotel as we wanted to check in and dump the rest of our bits and bobs in the hotel before going onto the footie. 20 minute trip to the Glentoran ground which was handy from the hotel, we had a butchers around the club shop, got our shirts (to save postage), Chris had his picture with the BetMcLean cup trophy before we found a seat, tickets were a  bargain £15. Glentoran Vs Crusaders, considering the football isn’t a great standard, a bit like league 2 in England I’d say we actually had a fab game to watch, Glens won 5.1 and a crunching tackle saw the crusaders player get a straight red card, which by the way i called about 10 mins prior as the game was lively! 

Once the game finished we made our way back to the city centre. We had dinner booked at Yard bird restaurant which was located in the Dirty Onion pub so we had a few drinks there before making our way up for dinner. It was really nice, I had a Buffalo Chicken burger with spice bag loaded fries and Chris had the same burger but with Cheese & gravy loaded fries, was yummy! We went onto the Duke of York pub, this was a really oldy waldy looking pub but really busy, presume because it is on TikTok a lot now so many people are visiting, we were stood outside having a drink and noticed the pub across the road looked quieter but the security man on the door weren’t really letting anyone in. When the door did open we heard some good ol’ Irish music playing and I was desperate to find a quiet pub with Irish music. I was disappointed we couldn’t go in, I joked with the security man to leave the door open so we could hear the music at least and that’s when he asked if we would like to go in, he explained it was a private function but they were letting in a few people if they weren’t rowdy or disruptive, so we jumped at the chance. Grabbed a drink and just relaxed listening to the people play their musical instruments and sing alongs, it was just a perfect kind of evening after a busy day. As we had been up since 3am I was gutted I was now feeling tired, although it was around 10pm, we had been up a very long time, we had to start making our way back to the hotel as my eyes were shutting otherwise I would have stayed until they stopped playing music!

Nice walk back to hotel for some shut eye, the city hall was lit up and looked very pretty.

Sunday - 01.03.2026 - travel day home.

Slept like a log, the hotel was quiet, the bed was comfy so it did the job for what we needed, we laid in until about 10.30 and caught up on sleep from the day before which really helped. We checked out and went next door to Wetherspoons for breakfast, we had a full Ulster breakfast, which is pretty much the Northern Ireland full English but included Potato bread and soda bread i think it was, which both were very nice. It was still early as most pubs don’t open until 12 and shops don’t open until 12 or 1pm. We grabbed an Ice coffee/ Frappe in Starbucks before looking in a couple of shops. We wanted to find somewhere to watch the old firm derby (Rangers V Celtic) but was struggling so we ended up in a pub called Kelly's Cellar, no Tv but was a lovely little pub which got very busy very quickly, we had a couple in there before moving onto The Morning Star where we had a Sunday roast dinner.

We then had to start making our way back towards the Airport so we walked to central station, had a beer in Brewdog before getting the bus back and settling ready for our 20.55 flight home.

Trying to get a trip in for April, otherwise next stop is Napoli 🙂