Monday 17 August 2009

Belfast Maritime Festival 2009

Once every 20 years, very large ships sail the ocean and stop in Belfast for the Belfast Maritime Festival. They docked in Belfast this year on Thursday, August 13th for the first time as a fleet since 1991, and set sail again on Sunday, August 16th. It was beautiful to see the large ships.


We decided to go to the festival on Saturday once we got up and moving. We were off about 11 am. The plan was to drive to a park and ride outside the city and take the bus to the festival. As there's really no other convenient way to get there, we chose the P n R nearest us. AT 11:30, that car park was full. It should hav been a warning to us about what we were to find once we got there. Anyway, we drove around the city to the 2nd nearest P n R. The # of cars there was stagering, and there was already a queue for the buses. The thing I have to say about lines in Europe are that even if they are long, they rarely last, and standing in one can be pleasantly short! We took a double decker to the Queen's Quay and with in seconds of getting off the bus, Hazel took off for the nearest piece of grass and kids....


Once on the site, there was just an amazing amount of people and ships.




We got treats and walked for a a short while before the masses of people got to all of us. So we headed home.
It was a great experience and I'm so glad we were able to go. It's bazaar to think that Hazel will be atleast 20 before the next fleet of ships sail in....

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