A day in… Belfast

Adrian explores Belfast in a year when the city majors on its links with the ill-fated Titanic.

Top 10 Valentine’s breaks

Boutique hotel experts Mr & Mrs Smith have sifted through the schmaltz to find Valentine’s packages that will really set hearts aflutter (and won’t involve soggy petals clogging the plughole). Here are 10 hot properties that offer something a little bit different…

Irish Passport Office

From the website:

“The Passport Office, which is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs, issues passports to Irish citizens.

All Irish citizens are entitled to apply for an Irish passport. Services are provided by the Passport Offices in Dublin and Cork and by Irish Diplomatic and Consular Missions overseas.”

Visiting the USA

Newly published data shows that, up until the end of November, there are still fewer of us going to the US than in 2009. But it is only down by 1%, which isn’t a lot in the scheme of things. Compared to South Korea whose visitor numbers to the US are up by over 50% it does make a difference. Why are we reluctant when traditionally it has been one of the big destinations for Brits?

Our Jane, a Time Out Person of the Year

Like many publications, Time Out, nominates its people of the year. And amongst them, we are delighted to say, is Jane who writes our regular “Letter from London”

Tatton Park Wins

Last week, Visit Chester & Cheshire held their annual tourism awards. There were 15 categories and Tatton Park won the award for best visitor attraction of the year. It isn’t the first time it has been successful, this being the third time this century. Receiving over 750,000 visitors each year, some of the reasons for its likely success are that it combines 50 acres of gardens, (out of 1,000 in all) a mansion, a park and it is easy to get to from two motorways. They also have a large number of events operating throughout the year and you can see those by looking at CD-Traveller’s event pages.
Of course, they weren’t the only winners. The award for the best tourism experience went to the shark dive at the Blue Planet Aquarium near Ellesmere Port. Sharks have never been one of my favourite things so I am one of the exceptions since the Aquarium even gets large numbers voting in its favourite shark category. (Bella the Black Tip Reef Shark won last years with 3,000 plus votes!)

Seeing in the New Year

New Year’s Eve and the first day of the New Year have become tourist attractions in their own right. Television has magnified it by capturing the moment when the New Year begins in a number of places. Around lunchtime on New Years Eve, the new year is heralded in Sydney in Australia with a huge firework display and winds down about 24 hours later with the display from Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. In between, there is the traditional gathering in London at Trafalgar Square, in Princes Street in Edinburgh, the swinging of fireballs in Stonehaven near Aberdeen (quite a sight if you’ve never seen it) and the counting in of the new year in Times Square in New York. As well as that a large number of towns and cities such as Nottingham and Carlisle will have firework displays.