Luckily, the Titanic was built in Belfast and someone has capitalized on this by offering a Titanic boat tour!  Actually, I thought it was a walking tour at first, but we found ourselves on a boat so it became a boat tour.  This boat tour wasn’t much better than the one in Dublin since much of Belfast (especially the shipyard) has been replaced with new buildings.  We did learn a few interesting things about the Titanic’s history, however:

1. The Titanic had two sisters, the Olympic (slightly smaller) and the Brittanic (slightly larger).
2. The Olympic was damaged twice while the Titanic was being built.  When the Olympic came back to Belfast for repairs the Titanic had to be moved out of the dry dock.  Thus, the Titanic was completed behind schedule and it departed later, when it was colder.  Had it left on time there may have been fewer icebergs in the warmer water.
3. Titanic’s Captain Smith was the captain of the Olympic when it had both of its accidents.
4. Just before the Olympic left (after being repaired) the second time, a few crew members were swapped from the Olympic to the Titanic at the last minute.  One of the men who switched from the Titanic to the Olympic had the key to the cabinet in the crow’s nest where the binoculars were.  He forgot to hand it over and nobody saw the iceberg in time.

We also saw the Nomadic, built at the same time as the Titanic, which was one of the two ferries built to take passengers out to the Titanic.  The Nomadic held the first and second class passengers while the Traffic ferried the steerage passengers.  The Nomadic is also the last of White Star’s boats afloat.  It was being used as a restaurant in Paris until the Northern Ireland government bought it and brought it back to Belfast.

The first thing we noticed is that Ireland is building an interstate from Dublin to Cork, the two largest cities.  In the last week I’ve heard several British radio talkshow hosts complaining that the Irish don’t know how to drive on these new roads, but at the time we were quite excited to be driving on a road without grass down the middle.

We got to Cobh (pronounced “Cove”) – it was a rare, beautiful day in Ireland – and walked along the water for a bit.  We decided to go on the “Titanic Trail” tour because the posters said it was “internationally acclaimed.”  The pictures of the town below are meant to show how colorful everything is.  We also learned that because of Cobh’s dependance on the sea trade most of these buildings are several hundred years old, as opposed to most of the rest of Ireland where the recession in the 1960s forced people to build ugly buildings – or something like that.  The tour guide said so.

It turns out that our tour guide researched all the information he shared with us himself, has been giving this tour for 12 years, has written books on the subject, done documentaries with the BBC on several subjects, and has basically revitalized the tourism sector of Cobh by himself.  On our tour he carried around pictures he’d taken of Titanic-related artifacts and showed them all to us.  He personally knows the last living survivor of the Titanic (she was 9 weeks old at the time).  All in all, he was a pretty good tour guide.

The tour ends in a local pub where we all got a free glass of Beamish, a very dark liquid that makes one Squeamish.  Katherine and I both had a sip (see below for proof) and moved on to better things.  Mom and Mary managed to tolerate it – I don’t know how.

The next pictures you’ll see are of St. Cormac’s Cathedral.  It took 80-some years to complete and houses Ireland’s only carillon – and it only has 49 bells.  For those keeping track, that’s USA: 270, Ireland: 1.  And Iowa State’s campanile has 50 bells.

After leaving Cobh we headed to the Jameson Experience at the Old Jameson Distillery.  We again avoided the tour because a) it cost money, b) we were short on time, and c) we didn’t really care.  We raided the gift shop instead.

The last few pictures you’ll see are of some of the real estate around Cobh, most notably an 800-year-old castle.  The price was not advertised.