I thought I'd explore the town. On the walk across the pontoons I saw 4 black guillemots. The water is really clear in the marina and when they chased each other under water you could see the flashes of white on their wings as they whirred around. It reminded me of the white on the flukes on Minke whales as you look at them through the water.
There was an amazing shop devoted to wedding cakes. the range of cakes was incredible.
If in the Republic, Wexford doesn't open until midday on Sunday, then in Northern Ireland, Bangor doesn't open until an hour later. The Tourist information office is located in the Tower house, which was built in 1657 and the oldest building to remain in continuous use.This has included a girls boarding school in 1830 and a hot sea water bathes between 1933-1954.. It is next to the Rabbit Rooms ,which is where the hen parties were going to last night.
There was a photo of the building and its setting in 1912 and I thought it would be interesting to see how much things had changed. The filling in of the harbour to create the car park has made a big change.The tourist office would not be open so I thought I'd go up to the North Down Museum. this sits behind Bangor Castle, which is now the offices of the district council. It was built in 1852 in the Elizabethan-Jacobean style. It has 35 rooms and a former music salon which is now the Council chamber. It's an impressive place. However the museum was only open between 2.00-4,30, so I thought I'd check out the train service to Belfast.
A train was waiting and so paid the £5.40 return ticket for the 30min ride to Belfast Central. The train goes on to Portadown, but the unlikely route goes via Sydenham, Holywood ( pronounced Hollywood) and Balmoral! The train runs along the South side of the Lough and you get a good view from Holywood.
It's a 10 min walk into the city centre. I passed the back of the Hilton Hotel and was impressed. The back of places and the service areas are usually not very well designed, but the curved wall and changes in materials worked really well.I soon learned that Belfast doesn't open until about 2pm. It has the usual comprehensive shopping centre and there has been a lot of retail redevelopment. As I walked around wondered what our shopping centres consisted of before there were phone and coffe shops!
There was a Covent Garden market in the St Georges market. It was pretty deserted and the stall, holders were pretty bored. The entertainment was a chap singing a range of stuff." I am the music man" seemed to be entertaining the 3 young girls, but hardly anyone else!
The Law courts were very well protected by high gates, which obscured quite an impressive building. However, it wasn't a patch on the Belfast City Council building.
Along Donegal Street there were tall structures, which looked like the ribs if a ship. Each one had the name of one of the ships that had been built in Belfast starting with the Titanic and its sister ships.
On the water front there were a couple of interesting sculptures, One was a woman with a hoop. She was meant to represent the spirit of reconciliation.
I wasn't sure what the fish was meant to represent, but its backdrop was anew office block called "The Boat".
The thing which really impressed me though was a display of water fountains within the pavement. The jets of water were choreographed in an ever changing display. At times it looked like a low level fireworks. At another the pulses of water as they landed and hit the pavement sounded like a complicated hand clapping. If it hadn't been raining so hard by then I could have stood there for ages.
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