Belfast: The Sights

When Belfast was announced as the Eastercon 2025 location, we were excited about getting to explore the city and maybe do some more general touristing. I had never been to Northern Ireland at all, and of course the Giants Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage site so I knew we definitely wanted to see that.

During the convention I had a chance to pootle around town, walk along the river getting to and from the hotel, explore St. George’s market, see some murals, and generally get a feel for the centre of town, which is lively and full of interesting looking places. Our plan was to stay till Wednesday afer the convention, giving us a full day for to do a proper coach tour to the Causeway and a half day after that to fit in a bit of town before our flight.

We booked with McCombs, who did a marvelous job. We had to wake up early to get breakfast and be at the coach stop by 8:30am, but it was worth it. Our driver was great and the area is beautiful even before you get to any of the officially interesting spots, plus we there were three other convention folks on our bus, so we got to hang out at each stop, which was fun. There was a second bus behind us, and we spotted several other fans in passing.

The tour included lots of Game of Thrones locations, of course – the production seems to be looked upon fondly for showcasing the area, involving local talent at many levels, and of course bringing a lot of tourism. The Dark Hedges was a lovely contemplative stop near the end of the day, and the weather turned obligingly overcast and atmospheric by the time we got there. One cool thing is that after Storm Gertrude knocked some of the trees down, ten intricately carved GoT doors were made from them and placed in pubs across the country. There were two on our tour, but we forgot and I only accidentally managed to spot the one at the Hedges Hotel.

The other big stop was Bushmills Distillery, which wasn’t something we were especially excited about but turned out to be very good, we both had two different taster flights, and enjoyed all but one of them as I recall. The gift shop was top notch, too – as a connosieur of the genre, I give it 10/10 – we bought some copper spirit measures.

The next day was our last in Belfast, the day before some Eastercon folks had posted about going to the C.S. Lewis sculpture part, so I was excited to do that, but John had spotted something about a GoT stained glass walking tour. I didn’t quite understand what it was and expected it to be a bit like the doors, installed inside businesses, so was iffy on it. But the first one was a short walk along the waterfront, which we hadn’t seen much of, and gave us a chance to visit the Big Fish which a lot of fans had also posted about during the weekend, so we headed over that way. And boy was it worth it – each of the windows is about two meters tall, mounted on a pedestal that serves as a convenient bench. They are beautifully designed and positioned so that on a sunny day you can get a really beautiful effect.

The trail takes you all along the Maritime Mile, showcasing just how much we had not seen yet. We’d decided to skip the Titanic museum, having been to the very good one in Southampton – but it does look pretty impressive and we ran into some fans from the previous day there, so that was fun.

We finished up with C.S. Lewis Park, which suffered a little in comparison, but is quite nice actually – and clearly designed much more for the local neighbourhood – although we did not get to explore much of the area given our limited time. Inevitably we also ran into some fans there!

Two things about the park that I liked was the amount of children climbing and generally enjoying the sculptures, and the fact that the one featuring the wardrobe also has adult Digory Kirke holding the wardrobe door ajar, and that one is situated in front of a public library. (I suppose I did also quite enjoy Aslan’s baffingly anatomically correct design)

Sadly it was time to go back and get our luggage. We noticed an excellent souvenir shop right by the hotel, which we must have walked past twenty times, and got our usual magnet plus this excellent bag.