In praise of Belfast
Few cities have been transformed as dramatically as Belfast
If I had to sum up al lthe changes for better in Belfast in recent years, I wouldn't need to elaborate further than the sunflower. All you need to do is stand for a moment to look at the neat row of pink tents stencilled on its outer wall.
The sunflower bar Belfast
The sunflower appeared four years back. Pedro Donald, the new landlord, painted the safety gates (from the troubled era) bright green, hung baskets of flowers from them, and left them permanently open.
The Sunflower is also home to the Lifeboat, a monthly series of readings hosted by Stephen Connolly and Manuela Moser, who are working on their PhDs at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University on the other side of the city.
The Linen Hall Library, halfway between Union Street and the university, is a reliable diversion, and another venue, as it happens, for readings curated by young writers, in this case Michael Nolan and Padraig Regan.
Belfast feels very much like a young person’s town just now, or rather once again: the people who founded the Linen Hall Library in 1788 were frighteningly young, barely out of their teens a few of them, and international in their outlook and politics.
If you want a different view of the city go there, even if it is just to gaze out the windows on to the grounds of the City Hall, home in winter to the Christmas market and in summer to unselfconscious sun worshippers.
The Linen Hall is also on the doorstep of some of the city’s best new cafes and restaurants on Wellington Place – try Home – and, parallel to that, Howard Street.
Belfast has risen up from its darker past and is currently one of the coolest, youngest spots to be. Definitely pencil it in for a trip this summer.