Live by the Sun - Love by the Moon: DAY 177

Sept 12 - Tour Through the Irish City of Belfast
Belfast means "mouth of the sandbanks". It is the administrative capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. It's also on the flood plain of the River Lagan. Historically, Belfast has been a centre for the Irish linen industry, tobacco production, rope-making and shipbuilding: the city's main shipbuilders, Harland and Wolff, which built the well-known RMS Titanic, propelled Belfast on to the global stage in the early 20th century as the biggest and most productive shipyard in the world.

Skyline of Belfast

We jumped on the commuter train from Caroline's place about 20 minutes to go to downtown Belfast for our last day there. We saw some young people hanging out at the City Hall.

One red-headed girl among all the boys on the park bench.

Belfast City Hall is Belfast City Council's civic building. It is located in Donegall Square, in the heart of Belfast city centre. It first opened its doors on 1 August 1906.

A close-up of Belfast City Hall

Colorful Coat of Arms of Belfast

Belfast Telegraph Office est. 1870

WWII shell damage to the wall

Although WWII caused damage to the stone in the Telegraph building, it continued to publish telegraphs without interruption.

The "Albert Clock" was erected in 1865 in Gothic style to commemorate Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert. It was tall enough at 113ft, to offer an excellent vantage point for at least one enterprising sightseer to get a birds-eye view of Titanic’s launch. Built on land reclaimed from the River Lagan, the clock features a statue of Prince Albert as well as ornately carved crowned lions and floral decorations.

Albert Clock

A closer view

The coolest fountain that did about a 5 minute choreographed dance.

The Big Fish
This 10m (32ft) Salmon was commissioned in 1999 to celebrate the regeneration of the River Lagan and the historic importance of the site (confluence of the River Lagan and Farset, which Belfast is named after).

"Here fishy, fishy - wanna big KISS?"

The outer ‘skin’ is a cladding of ceramic tiles decorated with texts and images relating to the history of Belfast. It has beautiful blue scales. Every scale is a tile, and every tile tells a story about the city.

The Big Fish

Interesting sculptures outside the mall

Presbyterian Church of Ireland

Titanic Memorial Gardens

Lord Mayor of Belfast (1896-98)

Within days of the Titanic disaster, suggestions were put forward in Belfast that the local victims should be commemorated with a memorial.

On June 26th, 1920 the dedication ceremony was held. Thomas Andrews, as a managing director of Harland and Wolff, is listed first, while the lowest-ranking crew members occupy the tail end of the list. There are 22 of them from Belfast listed in the plaque.

Titanic Memorial Garden - April 15, 2012 - ANNIVERSARY
The garden's memorial plinth supports fifteen bronze plaques which list, in alphabetical order, the names of 1,512 people who perished on RMS Titanic.

When the plaques were being designed, they believed that a complete list of names was already in existence; however this was not the case.

Many existing lists documented the First Class, Second Class and Steerage, but did not necessarily include all the crew members, the Guarantee Group, the postal workers and the musicians.

This is the first time that the names of everyone who perished have been recorded on one monument. 'The Belfast List' as it is now known, is a key feature of the memorial garden.
Some of the plants provide hints to the background story to the garden, the blue Forget-me-nots, the fragrant rosemary (rosemary symbolizing remembrance), the attractive Magnolia stellata or star magnolia, providing white star shaped flowers between March and April, and of course the birch (symbolizing renewal).

The memorial presents an allegorical representation of the disaster in the form of a female personification of Death or Fate holding a laurel wreath over the head of a drowned sailor raised above the waves by a pair of mermaids. It has been used as the site of annual commemorations of the Titanic disaster.

Together with the garden, it is the only memorial in the world to commemorate all of the victims of the Titanic, passengers and crew alike.

We stayed in the gardens for quite awhile, reflecting on this horrible and tragic incident that I had found fascinating in my youth to study about.

An ugly 1970's icon in the center of one of 40 parks in Belfast.

St. Anne's Cathedral

Thanksgiving Square Monument - "Beacon of Hope" at the cost of 1/2 million dollars. Whoah! The globe at her feet indicates the universal philosophy of peace, harmony and thanksgiving, and has marked on its surface the cities where the people and industries of Belfast migrated and exported to.