St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast

Another trip to Belfast, this time to collect new loudspeakers which will go with the new music system which I hope to have tomorrow. I got a great deal from Richer Sounds, but a condition of the price was that it's only available to personal shoppers. I phoned yesterday to place my order and told them I'd be up today. My mate Derek suggested that I get the train in Drogheda rather than at Dublin's Connolly Station, and this is what I did. Taking this option meant I had the car handy right beside the railway station when I got back, which isn't possible at Connolly.

This was my second train trip to Belfast in as many months, of course, and I was very, very tempted to choose a train blip today. But circumstances dictated otherwise (though I do still like that train shot).

I'd done my map checking yesterday, so knew where Richer Sounds was (and had the iPhone with me anyway, whose Maps app came in really handy). I'd been a bit concerned about lugging the speakers back to the railway station in Belfast, but came up with a brainwave which neatly solved the problem. Richer Sounds is behind the Castlecourt shopping, so I took a leisurely walk through there, went out the back door and came out right where I wanted to be. I paid for the speakers then (it was 1:00 pm) and told them I'd get a taxi back there around 3:30 to pick them up and continue on to the station. That meant I had a decent amount of time to explore parts of the city I hadn't seen before. What caught my eye almost right away was the Spire of Hope atop St Anne's Cathedral, and then that turned out to be beside the University of Ulster and the Occupy Belfast tents were in front of the Cathedral and the whole area around Writers Square was fascinating. So I did a good bit of blipping (dodging the sometimes heavy showers which alternated with nice sunny spells), some of the results of which are in this Picasa album.

I was delighted that I decided to go into the Cathedral. It's a fine building (only a hundred years old or so, and very Romanesque in style), and the Spire of Hope really is a great success (and a very brave addition). Discovering the Cathedral really was the highlight of the day, so it's only right and proper that this interior shot should displace the on-the-train one as today's blip.

I had a bite of lunch in the Vaudeville Café on Arthur Street (very nice, and excellent value) and walked back up to City Hall to get a taxi back to Richer Sounds and on to the railway station. I got to Drogheda around 5:45 and was back home forty minutes later Naturally I connected up the new loudspeakers immediately, and I've spent most of the rest of the night putting them through their paces.

Bigger cathedral