MacKat in Ireland

After our plans changed Saturday we had some time to kill.  In our Welcome to Belfast book we noticed that there was an IKEA in town.  Katherine has been espousing the virtues of IKEA for some time now and I’ve never been to one.  So, we hopped on a bus and headed out to furniture paradise.

IKEA stores are laid out such that the first floor has you walking through several mock rooms in which everything you see can be bought at the store.  This includes paintings, books, cups, carpet, faucets, etc.  We took note of what looked good and what was ugly.  You then walk down to the ground floor and pick out all the accessories you could ever want.  We didn’t buy anything (again) but I decided that the Swedes have got globalization figured out.

We had planned on taking an express shuttle to the Giant’s Causeway Saturday morning and being back before dark.  We were at the bus stop on time but, of course, the tour was full.  When I had called the guy on Friday he didn’t mention anything about the tour being full.  And, who goes to the northern tip of Ireland at the end of November?  Anyway, our plans for the day were shot and we had to come up with something else.

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.