(written on 14 March 2013)

And this is what the ground floor of our building looks like now. Coffeeshop Extase, which was here for many decades, was forced to close by the city after an inspection found a supply of 8 kilograms of drugs on the premises, where 0.5 kilograms is the maximum. The city has been keen to close all coffeeshops in our street (there are three) and I’m fairly sure this was a very convenient reason to close the coffeeshop. For many months there was no activity (as in closed shutters) but now, as you can see from the picture, the interior has been demolished and is waiting for redecorating.

(written on 14 March 2013)

“And it’s back to 40 hours of Facebook a week!

OFFICE! Did I say Facebook? Huh, funny that… Office, that’s what I meant…”

That’s what I put on Facebook early in the morning as I returned to the office after my holiday. Yes, that holiday is gone again; two weeks of wonderful nothingness over. But I have enough trips to look forward still, so I can’t be too sad. In less than a month I will be in Barcelona for nearly a week of just beach and relaxation and nothing else. Then, at the end of September I will be in Madrid for my birthday weekend. There will be a trip to London in October with Hanno as well, as well as a visit to Glasgow, also in October. And I’m sure there will be some more visits abroad before the end is over.

Here in Amsterdam there are some party weekends coming up as well. Hartjesdagen on Zeedijk is coming up in a couple of weeks and before that, namely next weekend, Amsterdam will see its biggest party of the year when Pride weekend is on the calendar. The flags in the picture above were placed on several bridges throughout the city to remind people of the upcoming party weekend. 

In other good news today: it seems that the ground floor of my building will finally see some activity again. I had an email from the person who is the administrator of our home owners association and apparently there will be a sushi bar opening fairly soon. That’s great news because for months now the ground floor has looked terrible, after the coffeeshop that was there was forced to close by the city. First the shutters were down for a long time, but now they are up and it seems that there’s been some demolition work done. Unfortunately one of the windows is now broken because of that but at least something seems to be happening again.

(written on 12 March 2013)

The picture shows the southern tip of the Isle of Man, an island right in the middle between Ireland and Great Britain, which is not even part of the United Kingdom or the European Union, but which is a Crown Dependency of the UK. As you can guess from its location, the picture was taken as I was on my way back to the continent again. I had had a last breakfast in the hotel, a last coffee in Starbucks (which I had really dragged out because my back was in no condition to carry this backpack for any longer than was strictly necessary) and then had made my way to Belfast bus station from where after a little wait a bus had taken me back to Belfast International Airport.

At the airport there wasn’t very much to do except from having yet another coffee and going to some of the shops (I bought a wallet and a lanyard, both from Guinness) and then just wait for my flight. That flight turned out to be very smooth and very eventless and before I knew it I was back in the Netherlands, where I landed at around 2pm. I can’t say I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but the prospect of Barcelona at the end of August, and Madrid at the end of September, will keep me cheerful enough. It was a really wonderful trip through various parts of the UK so I look back on this holiday with great satisfaction, no matter what my back may be telling me.

(written on 12 March 2013)

I was so happy last night when I could walk back from City Hall to my hotel without feeling the slightest pain in my back… so you can imagine my dismay when this morning getting out of bed could have been turned into an Olympic discipline. Once again it was so difficult to even reach the breakfast room, let alone to make my way out of the hotel and to the nearest Starbucks where I could give my back some rest again. But OK, I made it, and like yesterday things seemed to be getting easier as the day progressed.

In the morning I went to the large St George’s indoor market near Central Station, which was a beautiful and busy place where you could purchase all kinds or stuff. From home made jams and textiles, to soaps and spirits – it was all there in a wonderful old market hall. It had been recommended to me by someone that I have known for many years now from his and my blogs, from Facebook, and from two visits that he made to Amsterdam some years ago, namely “Birmingham Bear”, aka Colin (not Andy’s Colin though.) I think he may have been a bit cross with me for visiting the city where he now lives (he moved here from Birmingham but kept his pseudonym) without letting him now or me having the desire to meet up, but in all honesty, I really need to be here in Belfast all by myself. I need some alone time, after some very hectic months in Amsterdam, and also after some very nice but also very social days with Arno in Blackpool and with Andy and Colin in Glasgow, I have to be on my own again for a while. It’s funny how that works with me – but it’s also very important to me.

In the early afternoon I wobbled over to the new Titanic Museum (picture above – and yes, it is a photograph and not a drawing) to see the exhibition. “Sold Out” is what the sign said at the entrance but when I asked the guy at the till (probably the biggest homosexual in Nothern Ireland) he still had some tickets left so I was welcome one hour later for my time slot (coffee in the meantime of course!) It must be said that the building looks spectacular from the outside, and even the spaces inside are just beautiful… but the exhibition itself was maybe not my cup of tea. It was very busy which made it quite difficult to see or experience all that was shown and even though some of the things shown were very interesting (the IMAX show which let you see what the inside of the ship looked like)… well, maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for it all. I would still recommend it, especially if you have kids with you, but I would have designed the museum slightly different – and I would have enforced that “Sold Out” sign a bit stricter probably.

The evening? Very simple and very quiet. I was completely not in the mood for bars, even though there are actually some nice bars and even gay bars in the trendy Botanic area of Belfast, so after a nice meal in a fairly old-fashioned restaurant in the city centre, I went back to my hotel – satisfied but tired – and just read and relaxed. My last full day of this holiday had been very nice indeed, despite the back trouble that had come back this morning.

(written on 12 March 2013)

I got up in the morning and almost immediately my back screamed for attention. OK. Not good. What’s more, my stomach had been difficult all night as well (I shall spare you the details) so I had the feeling that I was slowly falling apart. With great difficulty (walking down stairs had suddenly turned into a challenge) I went to the hotel’s breakfast room and had a rather delicious Irish breakfast, and not soon thereafter I left the hotel, again at a snail’s speed. My first destination was a Starbucks just down the road because I could sit down there again to give my back some rest, as well as read a newspaper. The Olympics start in London today and there was a great picture of Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders on the front page of the Guardian, which of course I photographed and posted on Facebook straight away.

The Belfast Telegraph had more alarming news of a possible merger of some militant republican splinter groups that had threatened to create a new style IRA with all the violence that had come with the old one. The newspaper clearly thought that was bluff, but somehow it hadn’t even managed to convince itself of that. Belfast’s recent history is exactly what I had in mind for today because I was planning on going to the Shankill Rd. This part of town was the focal point for unionist sentiments during the troubles. This is where the heart of Britishness beat strongest in Northern Ireland and that’s what I wanted to see for myself.

So after a stroll through some southern neighbourhoods and the city centre, I headed towards the Shankill Rd, the main road leading west from the city centre. The picture was all too familiar. Sure, there were the shops and the bars and the churches that the public gardens that can be found in any high street, but there also many murals. And the language on the murals left nothing to the imagination; the people in this area would fight till their deaths to remain part of the United Kingdom and nothing less would suffice. One mural showed a street sign with two arrows to the left pointing towards “Eire” and “War” and two arrows to the right pointing towards “United Kingdom” and “Peace”. No points for guessing what they could possibly mean with that. And it was like this all down the Shankill Rd, with the moits poignant memorial at the place where once the Bayard pub had been. This pub was bombed by republicans (Provisional IRA) in 1975, killing five people and injuring more than fifty. On the sign it read “But the Irish Republican Army was not an army, nor were they so-called freedom fighters. They were a homicidal guerrilla grouping! A criminal organisation devoid of conscience! An organisation which fouls the decency of humanity in every sense and on every level!”, and so on, and so on. Funny how in a part of Europe where religion is so immensely strong, any signs of forgiveness and compassion are extremely hard too find. The scars are still way too visible, the wounds still raw and fresh. This will take much more time.

At the end of the afternoon, after having seen enough of the Shankill Rd, and after having walked back through a unionist (i.e. Catholic) part of Belfast (separated from Shankill by many fences and by streets that actually got locked on either side by huge gates in the evening and night) I ended up in the city centre again. Not much later I was back in my hotel, but I also left quite soon again because tonight was a very special evening. After dinner in a Wetherspoons pub, I went down to the gardens of City Hall (picture of Queen Victoria’s statue in front of the Olympic rings was taken there) to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. I watched it all for many hours on the giant TV screen that had been erected in the garden and I loved every single minute of it. What a spectacular show! Of course the scenes with Queen Elizabeth and James Bond were hilarious and very well done, but the whole atmosphere in the stadium was just so electric that you could almost feel it in Belfast. It was a wonderful experience to see it together with hundreds of people in the centre of one of the four capitals of the constituent countries of the UK – though of course the games are officially for London, not the country. Only when the parade of countries seemed to drag on forever and ever, did I decide to return to my hotel (and – oh joy! – that’s when my back was finally OK again!) and watch the rest there. I was back just in time to see the Netherlands march into the stadium. It was only when Paul McCartney started to… ehm… let’s call it ‘sing’ that I’d seen enough and I switched off the telly to go to the land of dreams…

(written on 12 March 2013)

As I got up, I felt some discomfort in my back, but it subsided quickly enough so in the morning I was feeling fit enough to get on a bike and together with Andy I cycled towards the prison in Bishopbriggs where Colin is working as a nurse. He was at work there today but of course we didn’t get the chance to see him. We cycled there mostly following the canal. The prison is so new that, when you look it up on Google’s satellite maps, it’s only a building site and even seeing it for real today, it all looked very new.

In the early afternoon, after lunch, I lifted up my backpack and once again felt a pang of pain in my back. This clearly was something more than just a brief pain in the morning. It was a bit more persistent perhaps. With Andy, I went to the Braehead shopping centre, which is not too far from the airport, and we had a coffee there and also looked into some of the shops. We also had a brief stroll on the south bank of the River Clyde… and then it was time for me to leave again. Off to the airport we went… but I wasn’t going back to Amsterdam, not this time! In a steaming hot departure area, where waiting in a line was quite uncomfortable, certainly with a back that kept screaming at me louder and louder, I was about to board a flight to Belfast, thus continuing my own little Diamond Jubilee tour of the UK.

The last (and only) time I’d been in Northern Ireland was in 1998, during my first Interrail train holiday. Then, as well, I had gotten there coming from Glasgow, except it was by means of trains and ferries. The ferry connection between Stranraer and Belfast unfortunately no longer exists so I had opted for a flight this time. The easyJet flight took about 15 minutes and of course there wasn’t even a trolley service, it was that quick. I got a great view of the Ayrshire coast though, so it was time well spent in that aircraft. From Belfast International Airport a bus took me very quickly to Belfast’s bus station, and from there it was just a short walk (or, given the state of my back, rather a shuffle) to my hotel near the Botanic station, a stone’s throw from where I stayed back in 1998.

Belfast really is a very pleasant city; it looks modern enough. The city centre has a nice shopping district. There are bars and restaurants and an impressive city hall. But of course you cannot think of Belfast without thinking of what is so euphemistically called ‘the Troubles’ – the Northern Ireland civil war that raged here for three decades and only came to a stuttering halt through the Good Friday Agreement. And you really don’t have to look hard or scratch deep to discover the wounds of that very recent past, and to see the reason why Northern Ireland still seems to be lagging a couple of years (or decades) behind in welfare and development. As I walked (again, shuffled) through the neighbourhood of the hotel in the evening (in search of food), it didn’t take long to see the first police station that looked more secured than CIA headquarters, and just opposite that a neighbourhood where many houses had murals such as the one in the picture above. The sentiments that caused all this violence are obviously very much alive still because these murals were freshly painted and probably among the best maintained things I saw in Belfast today. I didn’t feel unsafe (I hardly ever do anywhere) but I can imagine how some of these murals can get temperatures to a boiling point very quickly again in this province – it would only take a spark. Let’s hope they’ll keep the peace in this part of the UK.

(written on 11 March 2013)

Feeling remarkably fine (most definitely given the alcoholic onslaught from yesterday) we had a lazy breakfast in the morning, with Colin also being off work today, before making our way to Queen Street station where a train took us up to Stirling, a city of about 35,000, north-east of Glasgow. 

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The weather was really nice and we had sunshine for the entire day. Our main goal was a visit to Stirling Castle, which dominates the city’s skyline and can be seen from far away, but we also wanted to see a bit of the town itself. We started off with buying our lunches in a Greggs and eating them outside in a little garden somewhere halfway between the station and the castle.

After a visit to the Church of the Holy Rude (no, that’s it’s real name) which was a very impressive church building where a centuries old split of the building into two congregations was still quite visible, we continued to the Castle. It was a truly wonderful visit, that’s all I can say really of Stirling Castle. OK, a bit more then; it’s Scotland’s oldest building and the place where several Scottish Kings and Queens were crowned, among them Mary Queen of Scots. The buildings are very well preserved and the different parts of the castle gave a very good overview of the building’s (and by implication Scotland’s) history. What never ceases to amaze me is how bloody that history often is. One king killing the other in order to take over the throne seems to be more rule than exception. And Stirling Castle saw more than its fair share of bloodshed. We spent most of the afternoon in the castle and its grounds and never got bored. A real recommendation to anyone visiting Scotland.

On the way back to the station we walked past a pub just outside the grounds of the castle and we ordered some real ales, which we enjoyed sitting outside in the last of the day’s sun (at least in the walled garden where we were sitting) and we also decided to have dinner in the pub inside. The meal was very, very nice. With all tables taken it was clearly a popular place, and not without reason! A second pub we went to, after a bit of a walk through the city centre, was less appealing. The beer was nice, but the pub lacked the atmosphere of the first one. Nevertheless, it was good to be there, and it was with a very satisfied feeling that we headed towards the railway station afterwards. A sterling day in Stirling (sorry – couldn’t resist that one)!

(written on 11 March 2013)

Unfortunately Colin also had to work today, so he couldn’t join us for part of the day while Andy, Stacey, Michael and Andy’s former colleague Hugh and I went on a cocktail adventure in Glasgow city centre. Before meeting up with everyone, Andy and I walked into town and we wanted to visit the Tennement House, a museum that shows a typical Glaswegian tenement as it was at the turn of the 20th Century, when Glasgow was going through a major transformation to become the British Empire’s second city after London. I’ve been wanting to visit the Tenement House for ages but in my nearly eleven years of visits to this city never managed to do so… and today luck was also not on our side when a sign outside the museum told us it would only open at 1pm. Ah well. We went to the Museum of Modern Art instead which always has something interesting to say (although I can’t say I was mightily impressed with the video installation in its ground floor exhibition space).

We met up with everyone else in the early afternoon and went to our first destination; Rogano’s, just between Buchanan Street and Royal Exchange Square. We all ordered our cocktails (each one different, with mine being a mojito) at the bar and waited for a booth to become available for lunch – which happened soon enough. Delicious food and a second cocktail (mine based on Blue Curacao) followed soon enough and we were having a great time. Some of our group wanted to try another venue so after paying we walked across the road to TGI Friday’s, where the above picture was taken (from left to right it’s Hugh, Michael, Stacey and Andy.) All I can say about TGI’s is that their cocktails are enormous. Not necessarily special, but enormous for sure. So much so that I felt I needed to calm down a bit to survive the day (it was only mid afternoon), so I ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail, the news of which was met by some as if I had uttered some obscene profanities. None the less, I was happy with that decision because it saved my day!

Our next stop was the Revolution bar where some more cocktails and shots followed, some of them extremely fruity. That’s where Colin also joined us as he got into the city center from work. In the early evening we marched south again to the next bar, namely the corner bar of the Radisson SAS hotel on Hope and Oswald Streets. Probably not the best bar of the day (that accolade would go to Rogano’s) and we didn’t stay there for too long. It was also a glimpse of the Olympics that will start in London on Friday because some Olympic football games will be played here in Glasgow. They kicked off already (and there was already an embarrassing faux-pas as the South Korean anthem was played for the North Korean team) and some players walked past the bar where we having some more cocktails. The last venue of the evening was the Champagne Bar in Central Station itself where we had the last drink of the day, before waving everyone off on the train. We headed back to the West End after what was a lovely day, filled to capacity with delicious cocktails.

(written on 11 March 2013)

It was an early morning train back to Preston – fortunately leaving from Blackpool North station (just five minutes from the B&B) and not Blackpool South (about 45 minutes’ walk) as was mentioned on the ticket I had initially purchased. In Preston I had time to have a coffee before boarding a Virgin Pendolino train that was taking me all the way up north, to Glasgow. Once more it would have been a wonderful opportunity to see the landscape of Northern England, Dumfriesshire and Scotland’s central belt… but once again my seat had no view whatsoever. It was rather frustrating to just be staring at the inside of the train as it sped to Glasgow Central Station.

As I walked out of Glasgow Central, I felt great – back in Scotland! Always a super feeling… but I can’t say that Glasgow’s weather greeted me cheerfully. After some very nice days in Blackpool, the rain that came down heavily in Glasgow, did not seem very welcoming. Judge for yourself with the above picture of Buchanan Street, Glasgow’s main shopping street. But soon enough I was in the Buchanan St underground station and on an Inner Circle train headed out to Hillhead station and then a short walk on to Colin and Andy’s house. Andy had woken up after a night shift while Colin was at work, so it was with Andy that I walked into the west end for an afternoon coffee and then we returned home to prepare dinner. Because Colin is working tomorrow as well, we stayed in tonight but that was just perfect, just as the meal that Andy had prepared which, among other things, consisted of spring rolls and a salad with some edible flowers that tasted surprisingly nice!

(written on 6 March 2013)

I felt fine as I got up this morning and it was with gusto that I enjoyed the cooked breakfast in my hotel. Arno, on the other hand, was feeling maybe just a tad less fine, but he had enjoyed his breakfast as well and it took only a cup of tea on the North Pier to get him back into shape as well. He left Blackpool to return to Manchester just before noon again, so it was only a very short visit, but it was great to see him again (it had been too long – and I still haven’t made it to Manchester…) and I did enjoy meeting up with him here very much. We said our goodbyes at the station and while he enjoyed his Northern Rail service back to Manchester, I went for lunch, and following that for a very long walk through Blackpool.

Typically when people walk through Blackpool, they walk along the promenade, but I was determined to see something else of Blackpool this time, so while walking south to Pleasure Beach, I stayed inland as much as possible. I wanted to see parts of Blackpool I’d never seen before. So I saw areas of town with many B&Bs where I had not expected them (I thought most were around the North station) and I also found old tram garages, not in use anymore for the new flashy trams, but rather where the old trams were now parked, awaiting whatever fate they may have. I also saw derelict streets, closed shops, but also surprisingly nice streets that I’d never seen before. It was a very nice expedition through this Lancashire town. And I found Blackpool South station. I’d been quite curious about that! Blackpool used to have three railway stations on one line, with Blackpool Hounds Hill (Central Station) a truly vast station. However, progress in the form of cars meant that Central Station closed in the 1960s and the single line got interrupted, leaving a North terminus and a South terminus. Blackpool North is still a nicely sized station and I wondered what South was like. It turns out that that is just the end of railway tracks with some dodgy platform next to it and nothing else. No ticket machines or barriers, that’s just it. Still, good to see it for once!

As I finally reached Pleasure Beach at the end of my walk, and saw that even for just walking through the park you now have to pay an entrance fee (not all change is good, you see), I turned around and walked back to the North Pier, now mostly on the beach. The above picture of donkeys was taken very close to the South Pier. The weather was very friendly and the walk was very nice. Close to the North Pier and my hotel I went to the Washington Pub and had some lovely food and real ales while reading a newspaper, and I returned to my hotel at around 9, just as the sun was disappearing. In the meantime I had picked up an amazing collection of gadgets from the many tuppence machines in various arcades up and down the coast and on the piers. I think that if I would install a tuppence machine in my apartment in Amsterdam, I could happily become a hermit and I wouldn’t bother with ever seeing anyone ever again. I shall give this some thought. In my hotel I read a bit and then switched off the lights. It’ll be a relatively early start tomorrow because I’m off to Glasgow then! Today I still changed my train ticket. I was supposed to have gone from here to Preston from South station but after seeing today how far away that is from my hotel and how it’s an absolutely nothingness station, I changed my ticket to leave from North. That’ll make tomorrow morning a bit more relaxed.