Belfast - Titanic Quarter

Belfast is desperately trying to clean up its act....
To attract tourists, there is a new development on the other side of the river to the city buildings. The development proposed kinda reminds me of Cockle Bay in Sydney. They call it the Titanic Quarter.

model of the RMS Titanic

Belfast is where the RMS Titanic and its sister ships the Olympic and Britannic were built.
It's quite funny as people from southern Ireland say that it's crazy that they are claiming fame for a ship that sank. But the northern Ireland people just say "well it was fine when it left..."

Seeing as there wasnt much to do in Belfast, I decided to go and visit the Titanic quarter and do the tour of the docks.
The building of the Titanic commenced in 1909 and was completed in 1912. It was meant to be a very grand and luxurious cruise ship.

Visited the dry dock that they used to outfit the Titanic. The gates at the end are opened and water enters the dock. The ship is guided in by ropes that are wound around big cogs that are all along the side of the dock. Once inside the dock, the gate is shut and water is pumped out of the dock until it is gone and the ship sits on the log bed shown in the photo.


The pumps are very powerful and apparently it takes only 1 1/2 hrs to fully drain the dry dock.
The tour also took us into the pump room.

After visiting the Titanic Quarter I took a walk around the Odessy Arena and W5 Exhibition centre that are on the same side of the river as Titanic Quarter.
The arena is Belfast's multi-purpose arena and they frequently have ice hockey games there. One of the big sports in the are is ice hockey. The W5 Exhibition centre is kinda like a version of the Powerhouse museum. W5 stands for Who What Where Why When (well those are the W's but i'm not sure of the order...)
They have interactive exhibits and it just so happened they also had a Star Wars exhibition... so being the geek that I am... I was so there!

aliens from Star Wars

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