Here we go again on the magical mystery tour that has been our summer. This time we are in beautiful belfast. Its not hard to work out the chronology of this we have just been working in Cahersiveen for the weekend so we take a quick breath to draw a breath and gather our thoughts and get back on the road. This is of course a bank holiday weekend not even that though its the biggest bank holiday weekend of the year. We know from experience how it gets out there during the last major bank holiday we witnessed a 15 kilometer tailback out of Mountrath and as far as Borris on Ossory. Radical measures were considered in order to avoid sitting in this traffic. So we took out the map and the easiest way to get from Tralee to Belfast was directly across the country on the ferry across from Tarbert to Kilimer and thence to Ennis through Gort and Ballinasloe (Ronaldo is the queen of the Suck river and hence has a special affinty for the Suck)from Ballinasloe on to Athlone and on to Cavan town where we stopped to eat in an Indian whose name escapes me good food hard to find though cos its upstairs and out of the way also the traffic one way system in the town of Cavan is baffaling utterly stumping us on more than one occaasion with Ronaldo reduced to a gibbering seething anti one way mess and then back on the road in jolly form through Monaghan Armagh Portadown and straight on to Belfast.
We were due to stay in the Farset Hotel on the Springfield road so we negotiated the streets of Belfast in the dark and speaking of the dark a lot of the bleakness that seemed to sit over belfast maybe the pall of history or whatever gave the place a bleak aspect. While parts of it are still shrugging off this look the place seems to have come along a lot in the meantime. You still see to odd sectarian mural but sure why not, indeed i spent part of my time trekking around the Falls Road with Roanldo photographing murals even the themes in the mural art is broader than the last time we were years ago.
But back to bleakness the Farset where we were put up when we eventually found it the rooms were grand nothing special motel style cheap and cheerful. The issues centered on breakfast first of all the coffe tasted of Weetabix and after sitting there for a quarter of an hour with Ronaldo brewing slowly into an apopleptic rage Roanaldo got up and asked a guy where we could get breakfast he said we would have to talk to Brendan or someone when you get up in an hotel or a b and b you dont expect to have to find a guy and talk to him, what you want is someone to come over and offer you food and coffee. In short if in Belfast avoid the Farset like the plague. Top travel tips as ever.



On another positive note in between the shows we had the opportunity to eat in the cafe downstairs from the the performance space and the food was great so if you are in belfast dont avoid it in fact seek it out.



All in all a great trip but a very long weekend one which lasted into the next week back to Kerry for now to recharge the batteries.