And so as I was being driven from southern Ireland to the north, I thought there’d at least be a wall or some sort of barricade that said I had entered a different zone but you hardly notice it except for a friendly sign that says, “Welcome to Northern Ireland”.

Ah, how long I’ve wanted to see this sign. This is the last of the Great Britain cities I have yet to discover. London, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow – and Belfast’s long been on my list of cities to visit and see for myself what it’s actually like.

As with anything else, there’s nothing like an actual visit to put things in perspective. One of the “problem” areas is a small section in east Belfast and you can see walls built between neighbours’ houses, giving it a fortress effect. Huge murals on the walls speak of hope and reconciliation, some of hatred and violence. They lend a gritty arty feel to the precinct.

That day we were there, police cars were out in force – there was going to be a parade and they were taking precautions. You can sense there is some degree of tension still – years of sectarian hatred never quite go away.

Away from this area though and Belfast is like any city with ambitions and dreams. I spent a morning in the St George’s Market,located in Belfast City Centre and close to the River Lagan. There I had a typical Irish breakfast which if you had everyday you’d die of clogged arteries. The portions are huge, the sausages greasy and the baps, well, bleeding big. 

At this market, you can buy lots of Northern Irish goods and craft – I bought homemade marmalade, candles and craft to bring home as gifts.  I like the pride they have in local produce, after all, Northern Ireland is still largely rural.

Belfast was also largely industrial in the old days, the home of ship building and it’s a history the city’s rightly proud of. Here was where The Titanic was built.

When I first heard of the Titanic Belfast, I thought how strange that they’d build a monument to such a disaster – every book and movie I’ve ever read and watched have been about people dying – even though some are singing while they are dying.

But the Titanic Belfast is an eye-opener. It’s the story of Belfast and ship building and yes, the Titanic is a big part of it of course but its ending is only part of the story – and folks in Belfast hope this visitor attraction will mark a new beginning for the Belfast dockyards which are being revitalized – much like Cardiff Bay has been.

Built at a cost of £100 million, it’s an extremely well-designed visitor experience that the “Titanic” movie director James Cameron hails as “the biggest and best thought-out Titanic museums in the world”.

I like the visual effects which really immerse you in the experience, the voices that tell the story at each room and there’s also a buggy ride which moves you around to show you the different and painstaking processes of building a ship.

It’s a big structure – 14,000sqm of space with nine galleries of interactive exhibition space, including a dark ride, underwater exploration theatre and recreations of the ship’s cabins. So prepare to take a few hours of your day for this attraction.

Next to the Titanic Belfast is the studios where the Game of Thrones is filmed – now that I’d have liked to see but hey, I had to be content with driving around the areas where the television series was filmed.

And let me tell you, the Northern Irish countryside and coastal scenery are breathtakingly beautiful. Sheer cliffs meet the stormy seas. Rock formations stand out as monuments of time.  Along the Causeway Coastal Route, we stopped off for a walk along the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge (left), not to be recommended on a windy, blustery day.

Driving along the coastal route around Carlingford Lough and the Mourne Mountains, you can see Scotland in the distance (on a clear day that is) and zipping along the countryside lanes, you catch glimpses of a simple rural life that every urbanite dreams of escaping to.

“How much for a farm house?” I asked my friends who have sheep for neighbours. They rattled off a number. “What if I didn’t want the barn or the cow shed or the shed or the land?”

“Oh you mean you want the house, not the farm?” they said.

They know me well. What I know – I now have a completely different impression of Belfast and am in love with all things Northern Irish including the baps and sheep.