"Cortege" from "Callingstill" (1997)
Playlist
Various - Top 100 Albums 2011
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Starlightbright
Up reasonably early and to breakfast to hear the exploits from last night...
Out for a walk...
The hotel...
...was opposite the BBC building...
I walked into the town centre, past some reasonably-good-to-look-at buildings...
...and up to the impressive City Hall...
...then, along to "Progressive House" - it wasn't a club...
In preparation for the trip, I had researched all the record shops in Belfast and printed off a map - now I was walking round them...
The first, opposite Progressive House, was Dragon Records...
...at 9:52 am...
...it was shut...
I walked on through the town centre..
...and came to Premier Record Stores...
Despite being the oldest Record Store in Ireland, it did not impress...
Round the corner, the famous Good Vibrations was shut down...
The walk continued back to Dragon Records - it was now well beyond their opening time of 10am...
It remained well and truly shut...
In fact, all the shops I had noted on my map were either shit, shut, shut down or no longer in existence...
Rather disappointingly, only HMV held any promise...
I noted an interesting section dedicated to local bands - I partook of nothing but thought I might return tomorrow...
I started the walk back to the hotel...
...donating some cash to this busker, who advised his home-made (in 1984) machine was a "violin-trumpet"...
I believed him...
On, through the arcade...
...past the City Hall again...
...past this tall building again...
...and round to the local Weatherspoons where I was able to partake of their WiFi to catch up on e-mails...
Back round by the BBC...
...and today's drinking session began...
After spending probably too much time in the very expensive hotel bar, we set out in search of Kelly's Cellars and, after a few false starts, finally found it...
It had a slight, shall we say, "Republican" bent...
This was not a problem as far as I was concerned - and it was cosy and good...
...with a welcome roaring fire...
...and an old man with a beard...
...and portraits of the original Wolf Tones - this Barry Manilow look a like was apparently the "lucky" one, in that he was "only" hanged, as opposed to being hung drawn and quartered like his colleagues...
Taxis back to the vicinity of the hotel and to the excellent Ginger Bistro for a quite superb three course meal accompanied by more red wine and various other types of alchoholic beveridge than you could shake the proverbial stick at....
Tasty...
Indeed, tastier than it looks in the picture above...
After much eating, drinking, carousing and, in general, shenanigans, we left the restaurant around midnight...
At this point, your correpsondent once again bailed, deciding not to partake in the taxi rides around the city to various clubs and pubs where gaining entry would be succesful or not depending upon the whims of the doormen and their ability to detect the nuggetness of my chums...
Suffice to say, several of them were still out and about beyond 4am...
I, however, was in the land of nod...
Highlight of the Day : The fayre of the Ginger Bistro...
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