The City

Belfast City Hospital is colloquially known as "The City" (pic).  The Royal Victoria Hospital is known as "The Royal".  So you might hear someone say "Oh, I heard that yer man is sick, is he in the City or the Royal?"  Thankfully we are in neither, but we often walk through the grounds of The City on our way to and from meetings.  We were in different parts of Belfast today (Belfast is never called The City, maybe "the town" as in "I am going into The Town").  It occurred to me that the hospitals, the universities and government buildings take up a huge amount of Belfasts's real estate.  Whilst some people still live near the centre, the vast majority of us live out in the suburbs.