belfast shoppers delight

Ah Belfast. A few days before heading up there at the weekend I asked around for tips on places to go, pubs to hang out in, places to eat and whatever and I got at best resounding silence, and at worst a selection of comments about how crap Belfast is and how little there is to do there and how impossible it is to have fun. Not true.  It is tough to seek things out and the atmosphere can be a bit testing at times but fun places there are if you look hard enough.

Myself and a friend were being entirely unpatriotic and heading up to avail of the sterling prices and the lower VAT rate (this is your own fault Messers Lenihan and Cowen, you only have yourself to blame) When you shop mostly in English clothes chains, and you see the swing tag with the heavily inflated euro price sitting alongside the sterling one you start to get to thinking.  Once I remembered there was an IKEA there too I was sold.

We headed at the very early Saturday hour of 9.30am and were up in Belfast and out in the new shopping centre: Victoria Square, by 11.30am.  It’s great- very like a mini Dundrum with a great selection of high end high street shops like House of Fraser, Reiss, LK Bennett and Karen Millen mixed with the stalwarts H&M and Topshop with Urban Outfitters round the corner.  There’s a lovely designer shop called Cruise that stocks Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Vivienne Westwood and that sort of thing.  I was in the market for an outfit to wear to the middle brothers wedding so it was perfect.

Day of shopping over it was the (monumental as it turned out) turn of the Rugby which we watched from a brilliant old pub called Bittles. Squeezed in the door to find a traditional pub packed with older men watching the match on a giant flat screen.  Perfect. We created a little fort of shopping bags on the floor and shouted and drank along with the best of them.  And boy what a game! Drama to the very end.

Match over we headed for the hotel- Tara Lodge- which is back out University direction.  It was recommended by a work colleague and is the top visitor pick on trip advisor and it’s easy to see why.  A small hotel which is clean and nicely decorated (in that ubiquitous “modern hotel/bachelor pad” style) it is also unbelievably cheap at £85 for a double room B&B on a Saturday night. The bedroom was really big, the views out the window at night were great and the staff were super helpful- oh and there is free parking and a great brekkie!

There’s plenty to do in that area in terms of pubs and eateries as it’s the prime student spot, but we headed for the bright lights of the city.  A recommendation for Shu didn’t work out as it was fully booked, so we decamped for Ten Square but it was packed too. We’d passed a restaurant called Roscoff on Linenhall Street in the taxi but the Ten Square doorman said it was pricy, and we were cold, so we went round the corner to the Apartment. We maybe should have tried Roscoff.  The Apartment calls itself a hip trendy bar, which is always a sign of trouble in my book.  It is in a good spot overlooking the civic square thingy and the Belfast eye, but it is a funny old place.  The food is actually grand (but they stop serving at 9pm) if unexciting, but the music is loud and the place is packed with dressed up 25 year old girls and little or no men in sight- how does that work? The girls look like they’ve walked off the pages of Grazia and are all in skirts/dresses and heels and throwing back the cocktails but not a man to be found…weird. Maybe they come out later?

Our waiter recommended the “Cathedral Quarter” so we hopped a cab and on the cabbies advice tried The Cloth Ear. So this is where all the men were at! Place was packed with them -maybe the rugby effect?- and we couldn’t help thinking they didn’t get the memo that the ladies were all to be found across town.  We stayed there for a few and watched an intriguing queue of people across the way trying ot get into the Spanaird.  Decided against exploiting that one. Amazing how a typeface can put you off a place without ever going in…an Isolde’s Tower type pub we’re guessing.

Keen to test out the full potential we tried the trendy looking pub across the way.  Very London-ey and can’t remember the name. Weird table arrangement and a very bright bar…felt a bit like being down the back of Ron Blacks- in fact the whole strip seemed really Dawson Street like.  We turned on our heels and wandered back out and through a combination of asking people and following likely looking folk down the street (not always the best idea!) we struck gold with Muriels.  We had to wait about 15mins to get in but it was worth the wait.  A great little café/bar place it reminded me a lot of the old library bar in lilies crossed with Mr. Pussy’s (and now I am showing my age!!).  It was full of mismatched antique chairs and arm chairs, chandeliers and flock wallpaper with washing lines of fancy bras and pants strung up everywhere. Whole thing felt cosy and decedent and the sort of place you could get lost in a haze of absinthe and not emerge for days.

Crowd seemed the right sort, friendly and laid back and trendy without being too try hard (not a Karen Millen dress in sight) and the tunes were great. Bar staff were painful- one half were good looking and aloof, the other half snippy and easily distracted, but that could just be my ordering curse kicking in.

Wishing we’d found it earlier we had to head for our Leaba’s after one drink but a chat with a girl in the loos (that’s why we take so long in there- all the chatting) seemed to give the idea that this was one of the few spots worth checking out.  Others she recommended were Malmaison and the Cockerel just down the road.  They’re going on the list for the next trip.

The Sunday we got up for brekkie and got out to IKEA for just before 12 to discover it doesn’t open till 1pm!! What?!  Cleverly though the restaurant  opens at 11.30am and the showrooms open for “browsing” from 12noon with the tills opening at 1pm. This is kind perfect cause it takes at LEAST an hour to do the showrooms unless you are very sure what you want.

IKEA is such a masterclass in effective marketing and the powers of persuasion. I am so susceptible that I have to really watch myself but it effectively removes any barrier to buying. The Showrooms wind about so that you have to go through them all, room by lovely room, lest you miss something or get lost. The music of over the PA is punctuated with reminders that IKEA cares about your home and puts your home first and suddenly you’re wishing for a giant house so you can find a place for all this great cheap furniture!  The Market floor with all the pick-upable cheap ass kitchen wares (glasses 49p!, electric scales £5!) and bedding and rugs (£40!), storage, flowers, frames, it goes on and on.  Two trolley loads and 2 hours later we shoe-horned all manner of things into the car and headed back to Dublin with tummy’s full of cheap IKEA lunches, getting back in Dublin by 5.30pm. Job well done.