TLDR – Roxi wanted bubble waffles with dad for her tenth birthday. We took the train to Belfast for a day for titanic museum and bubble waffles
Sandyford to Belfast
Woke Roxi up a bit before 0600 to slowly get ready and leave the house around 0620. We walked to the LUAS and ended up waiting 13 minutes for train to GPO. Plan was to collect some snacks from a shops around the spire on the walk to the Connolly station.Most shops turned out to not be open yet. Eventually we found a Supervalue open for snacks. Boarded train to Belfast at Connolly around 0740.
Roxi came up with a new game for us walking to the train. The game goes – Use words from store names and building names in our conversations. We came up with some great stories! Roxi even thought I was actually talking about friends at one point when I used a few store names. We’re training first class in car A today. After sitting down we’re greeted with water and menus to order snacks. Roxi ordered pancakes while we played a few games of cribbage. Brought cards and no board. Used a cribbage board app on the iPhone. Worked great – no impact on battery thanks to USB on the train, and less things to carry in the pack – Roxi won both games.
Belfast walkabout
The new Belfast Grand Central train station is huge and quiet – feels like a library where you need to whisper. Whatever they did for sound control, hats off to them. Punched the Apple Store into the GPS to meander towards the no car high street area of town on the hunt for more snacks and shops to check out. Lego, Sephora, queens arcade, comic shop – Roxi was happy to go into stores but was not interested in buying much. We did buy some chicken rolls from Greggs.
Roxi was jumping up on a ledge next to a board walk and tripped landing hard on her knee. I heard her thump followed by more no sounds. Running to her, I rolled her over onto her back. Once she looked up at me she started crying in pain; Poor girl. Good 20 minute sit, sniffle, and snuggle before we walked / limped to the odyssey center.
At the center we had lunch time and rest time at Little wings pizza. Pizza by the slice for each of us plus a monster foot long bread stick. Before we could eat had to take a picture. Roxi says “fans eat before we eat “ while I took the snap; Gave me a laugh. Roxi was working epic cheese pulls eating the cheese sticks.
following lunch Roxi felt she was recovered enough to finish the walk / limp to the Titanic museum. She’s unstoppable when wants to do something. Part of the kid ticket comes with scavenger hunt. Of course Roxi found all of the little kid dolls on the kids scavenger hunt earning herself a certificate.
Sitting down after the museum Apple Maps showed the nearest bubble waffle place as Dublin. Roxi says “ DAD! We came here for bubble waffles and you didn’t even look if they had any? “ Quick dad you better do more searching – google maps showed a bubble tea and bubble waffle place near the Apple Store. Back over the river we went. The place we went too was packed; line out the door. Bubble tea + bubble waffle with ice cream obtained. No room to eat inside we found a bench across the street to work on our sugar high.
We had about 2 hours before train, so we slow walked to the station and had a sit in the station before boarding the train headed for home. We ended up on the same train we arrived on, with the same wait staff in the first class cabin. – Made it home by 2020.
The Rest of the pictures
