Finding a bargain in Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey — For months I had been pining for a trip to Europe, willing to go anywhere a cheap flight would take me. But the elusive bargain I sought didn't materialize until February, and it wasn't completely Europe.

The airfare of my dreams was a Valentine's Day special open to anyone: $599 round-trip from L.A. to continent-straddling Istanbul, including tax and fees. It required a companion fare (which meant I had to find someone to go with) and traveling in February. (This was Turkish airlines, and although this fare is not available now—some fares this month are as low as $758 on American, so keep an eye out for specials.)

With little time to plan, I found a willing accomplice (my friend Sonia), and packed a carry-on bag for the week. I scanned a few guidebooks during the 13-hour flight that said Istanbul wasn't the super bargain it once was. But traveling off-season in a country outside the euro zone worked in my favor. After just one day, I found the Turkish city easy to get to know — and easy to explore without spending a fortune.

During the impromptu trip, Sonia and I found good budget hotels in the hip Beyoglu and the old city for less than $100 a night. No mini-bars or microwaves, just neat single rooms (we didn't have to double up to save money) that included good breakfast buffets.

Cafeteria-like eateries that serve hot and cold Middle Eastern dishes for about $8 to $10 became our go-to stops for lunch and dinner. Entrance fees at the superstars of the ancient world — Hagia Sophia Museum, the Blue Mosque (also called the Sultanahmet Mosque) and Topkapi palace – ranged from free to $11.

The money we saved on hotels and food meant we could splurge on experiences we didn't want to miss, including taking a real Turkish bath ($60) and spending an evening seeing Mevlevi whirling dervishes ($22).

It was heaven to travel abroad without experiencing sticker shock at every shop and hotel. The week I spent in Istanbul, including airfare, cost about $1,400 -- a price I never could have matched in Paris or London for all that I got to see and do in this equally grand city that gave us the flavor of Europe and Asia.

Istanbul is compact and walkable, a nice way to mentally piece together its modern and ancient parts. In Beyoglu, the newer section of the city north of the landmark Galata Bridge, locals turn out in droves every evening to snack or simply be seen on Istiklal Avenue, a wide pedestrian shopping street with trendy clothing shops and boutiques.

Yes, there are Starbucks and Burger Kings and modern malls, but it's still an ideal place to people-watch and eat hot chestnuts while strolling under a canopy of blue lights that frame the street.

Istiklal also is where Sonia and I discovered our favorite dining stops. What I can describe only as storefront restaurants were easy to find anywhere in the city, and so nondescript I never knew the name of any of them. Just look for steaming troughs of food in the window and a cook standing by ready to load up your plate.

As a vegetarian, I found endless variations of eggplant, spicy okra, spinach and garlic, lentil soup and yogurt so thick it was served from sheet pans and cut like cake. There also typically was lamb roasting on a spit and chicken dishes too. I pointed to what I wanted – no menu necessary – and a waiter took the plates and served us at a table inside.

In Beyoglu we spent three nights at Pera Tulip hotel, which Sonia had booked before we left the States. This is a modern hotel with a spa area (sauna and hot bath) and a little piano bar. For $71 a night (less than the hotel's posted rates), the room was neat and clean, on the level of a Holiday Inn Express.

From the hotel, we often walked 45 minutes to Galata Bridge, which crosses the Golden Horn inlet and leads to the older section of Istanbul. Here fishermen line up with poles and buckets each morning to try their luck. Below the bridge, ornately decorated boats tied to crowded docks grill the fresh fish and sell $5 sandwiches to hungry waterfront diners.

The bridge was the stepping-off point to visit the Grand Bazaar, the Egyptian Spice Market and the Sultanahmet.

The covered bazaar isn't just a place to shop; it's a landmark. The ancient domed buildings draw lots of tourists who can find goods as diverse as 18-karat gold jewelry and cheap trinkets, musical instruments and leather slippers, hand-painted tiles and cotton tunics.

Shopkeepers here hustle in earnest, not necessarily to haggle but to sell, sell, sell. For me, it always started in English when they asked, "Where are you from? Cal-ee-FOR-nia?" If I feigned even the most remote interest in a necklace or bracelet, the salesmen (and they were all men) would launch into a spiel about the quality of the silver, the pendant, whatever they were selling.

Turkey isn't a member of the European Union (which remains the topic of much debate), and that means the Turkish lira is still the official currency. But stores, hotels and just about everyone quote prices and haggle in euros.

I found it hard to keep converting two currencies – lira and euros – into dollars every time I wanted to make a simple purchase. So I quickly adopted 10 euros (about $13) as my price point for three of anything: scarves, key chains, necklaces even slippers. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't.

Around midweek, Sonia suggested we shift to a hotel in Sultanahmet to get a different perspective on the city. The touristy old city was considerably quieter in winter than the hopping Beyoglu.

We inquired at several hotels in the area until we found a price we liked. The Vezir Hotel offered a cash rate of $53 a night with Wi-Fi and breakfast. It was an old pension-style building with no elevators (my room was on the third floor), and the Internet connection was spotty. But I liked the price and the fact I could hear the call to prayer emanating from nearby mosques while I was lying in bed. The single room had a double bed, small shower and a wooden door that still locked with an old-style key rather than a key card.

The hotel was about five minutes from Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque; it could take a week to tour and learn the history of these landmarks. We compressed the ancient trifecta into a day and a half without feeling too rushed.

At Topkapi, we wandered through the maze of ornate domes and blue-tiled rooms of the Harem, the private rooms of Ottoman sultans from the 15th to 19th centuries. (Many people skip this because it costs $8 besides the palace's $11 ticket.) Back in the day, riffraff like me never would have set eyes on the gilt canopy of the sultan's bed, the elaborate salons and private bathing areas. The rooms are largely empty, with the gems, armor and other royal possessions on display in the palace's treasury building.

With so many integral waterways— the Bosporus Strait dividing the city's European and Asian sides, the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn—ferries are a cheap and easy way to get around. We took a six-hour excursion one day along the Bosporus Strait ($14 round-trip) and spent another on an hour-long ride to Buyukada, the largest of a handful of islands in the Sea of Marmara called the Princes Islands. No cars are allowed on these small islands; horse-and-carriage rides or rental bikes are the modes of travel.

When we docked, some people toured shops and bakeries near the ferry building or took a walk along the waterfront. Sonia and I decided to head inland and spend a few hours walking up curling roads to the top of the island. Along the way, we saw summer villas – some dilapidated, some freshly redone – along roads mostly silent except for the clacking of horse hooves. (Guidebooks say the islands get crowded on summer weekends.)

Toward the top, we continued walking upward until we came to a pine forest and a Greek monastery called Aya Yorgi, orSt. George. It was a clear day with good views of the green forests of nearby islands and the water. I looked back at Istanbul's hills and dense whitish buildings and marveled at just how far this visit on a shoestring had taken me.

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Tracking Wallace Stegner's footprints in Vermont's earth

Greensboro, Vt. ——

Wallace Stegner wrote books about the American and Canadian West, so it's understandable that people consider the longtime California resident a Western author.

Stegner, a prolific novelist, essayist, conservation advocate and professor at Stanford University, was born in 1909 in Iowa and grew up in Utah and Saskatchewan, Canada. Today he is chiefly remembered for his fictional portraits of steely homesteaders and his musings on the American wilderness.

But Stegner lived in Vermont most summers from the late 1930s until his death in 1993, and he considered the small Vermont village of Greensboro his home away from home. Two of his novels concern fictionalized versions of people he knew here, and some of his best-known Western works, including the 1972 Pulitzer-winning "Angle of Repose," were written partly in his Greensboro study.

"For some writers, it's easier to particularize a place at a remove," said Jay Parini, a Vermont poet, novelist and literary critic who has written biographies of Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. Vermont, Parini told me, was Stegner's "emotional base" for his Western imagination.

I was drinking coffee with Parini on a sunny July morning in Middlebury, a college town in central Vermont about 300 miles north of New York City and half that distance south of Montreal. I had traveled here to begin my exploration of Stegner's Eastern literary legacy.

Middlebury was an appropriate first stop because it had a formative effect on Stegner's early career. Every August, Middlebury College hosts the nationally known Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at its nearby mountain campus. Stegner first attended it in 1938, and Steg-

ner biographer Jackson J. Benson says the writer's early experiences here helped him to develop confidence and hone his literary voice.

Bread Loaf was a major change of scene for the young Stegner. As a precocious teenager, he had attended the University of Utah while working odd jobs and covering amateur sports for a local newspaper. It wasn't until Stegner was earning graduate degrees at the University of Iowa in the early 1930s that he began to imagine himself attending Bread Loaf and hobnobbing with Ivy League literati.

Stegner's initial application to Bread Loaf was rejected, but he later spent eight summers strolling its meadows and talking books with such writers as Eudora Welty, Truman Capote and Vermont poet Robert Frost, who lived in the nearby village of Ripton. As Steg-

ner later recalled, the days were filled with lectures and manuscript swaps, the evenings with bourbon and laughter.

Frost was known as a curmudgeon, but he liked Stegner, and, according to Benson, it's likely that the younger writer's encounters with Frost suffused Vermont with a "special glow" in his mind. Stegner also took the title for his novel "Fire and Ice" (1941) from an eponymous Frost poem; his novel "Crossing to Safety" (1987) riffs on a line in the Frost poem "I Could Give All to Time": "But why declare / The things forbidden that while the Customs slept / I have crossed to Safety with?"

If Ripton was Frost's Vermont muse, Greensboro was Stegner's. Starting in the late 1930s, Stegner and his wife, Mary, drove cross-country nearly every summer in a station wagon packed with books, dishes and a typewriter and stayed in their weathered Greensboro farmhouse until early autumn, when teaching commitments typically pulled Stegner back to the foothills of Palo Alto.

Such tranquillity

Greensboro, about 90 miles northeast of Middlebury and a stone's throw from the Canadian border, lies deep in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, an impoverished area that has partly eluded the waves of gentrification that have swept Vermont. In the 1930s, the village no doubt appealed to Stegner's Frost-inspired vision of an ideal American town: a place where honesty is king and ordinary people make do in the face of hardship.

Stegner also liked Greensboro for its palpable sense of community. "I grew up without history and without the sense of belonging to anything," he wrote in the preface to the town's 1990 history. "From the first day I saw it, I responded to Greensboro because it had what I lacked and wanted: permanence, tranquillity, traditional and customary acceptances, a stable and neighborly social order."

As I drove to Greensboro from central Vermont on the radiant July morning, the landscape was a fusion of no-frills Americana and urban-tinged sophistication. Two miles after passing a sign that said "We Buy Used Guns," I ducked into a cafe that displayed posters for contemporary art exhibitions.

Around lunchtime, I turned onto a narrow country road and followed its whims for about 20 minutes until I hit the Greensboro town line. As I rolled down the town's main street, I noticed that half the cars outside the Willey's Store — an iconically Vermonty, white-clapboard affair — were Volvos with out-of-state plates. But I also saw pickup trucks hauling motorboats and flatbed trailers and a sign near Willey's window that advertised night crawlers and fishing licenses.

At Willey's, I bought pasta salad and a perfectly ripe peach, then walked toward the nearby village green. As a man crossed the street holding a crisp New York Times, a woman and her children sat down in the grass and unwrapped sandwiches.

As I sat down near them, I checked my iPhone. No service. Aside from the cars, clothing styles and names of the people in the newspaper headlines, I thought, it might as well be 1955.

After lunch, I walked to the headquarters of the Greensboro Historical Society and asked to see the Stegner archive.

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Travel bargains for military personnel

Servicemen and servicewomen have a world of travel bargains available. Here are some areas to explore:

Commercial flights — Contact commercial airlines directly or go to http://www.military.com and enter "military travel center" in the search box in the upper right corner to find available discounts. Some airlines also offer military personnel early boarding privileges and waive baggage fees. Be sure to ask.

Hotels — Military discounts can be as much as 30% at more than 4,000 U.S. hotels. Contact the specific property for its current military deal. The Omni San Diego, for instance, offers active and retired military personnel a rate as low as $131 a night. Mention "government/military." Info: (800) 843-6664, http://www.omnihotels.com. ID may be required at check-in.

Restaurants — Many restaurants offer a 5% military discount (even for fast food). Many offer free meals on Veterans Day and other federal holidays. These aren't highly publicized but can be great deals, so be sure to ask. "Military discounts are found at some chain restaurants, but not all locations participate," says Andrew Schrage, co-owner of MoneyCrashers.com, an online personal finance blog.

Entertainment — Check out the big dogs in entertainment: Disneyland, Disney World, Universal and some Six Flags locations. You should also check out ShadesofGreen.org, about a Disney World resort just for military families (active or retired). It is popular, so you'll need to book early.

Camping — TentsforTroops.org lists parks in 39 states that offer a minimum of two days of free camping or an RV site. Reservations are required and must be made directly with each campground. Military ID is required.

Sightseeing — Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises in New York City (www.circleline42.com) gives free tickets to members of the military (must show valid ID) and half-off sightseeing cruises for military families (for up to four guests per military member).

Skiing — Active-duty members of the military can ski and ride free at Squaw Valley (www.squaw.com) all winter, Sundays through Fridays, excluding a few blackout dates. This deal is also valid at Alpine Meadows ski (www.skialpine.com).

Car rental — Members of the Marine Corps Assn., National Assn. for Uniformed Services, Navy League of the United States, Navy Federal, Veterans Advantage and Veterans of Foreign Wars may get discounts with various car rental companies.

And here are some things to remember: Many discounts are available only to active military personnel. Although a military discount isn't advertised, it may exist. Some discounts are offered at the business owner's discretion.

Always ask about military discounts before making your reservation or paying for your ticket — train, bus, rapid transit, at bridge or tunnel crossings, at the parking garage, at the movie, the show or the restaurant — whatever, whenever or wherever you're traveling. It can't hurt to ask. You've earned it.

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A taste of Hungary's history in Budapest's sumptuous coffeehouses

BUDAPEST, Hungary —American coffeehouses are prized for their quick service and fast Internet — ideal for people on the go. But a century ago, European cafes were places to linger amid Gilded Age opulence. Nowhere was this more so than in Budapest, where some of its great historic cafes have survived economic crises, war and Communism.

My wife, Rachel, and my mother-in-law, Edie, had never been to Hungary, but they had been hearing about Budapest and its grand avenues, delicious pastries and vibrant Jewish community all their lives: Edie's parents were born here in the 1890s. Traveling with us in August on our voyage of reconnection was our infant son, Yair.

Both of Edie's grandfathers had died in the 1930s — by that time, Edie's father, Joseph, was already in New England — but her grandmothers lived to see the virulent anti-Semitism of the following decade. They were alive and well when the U.S. entered World War II in late 1941 — until that time, letters could be exchanged — but at war's end there was no trace of them. Edie remembers her father's grief upon being informed after the war that they were dead.

It was in search of prewar Jewish Budapest that we visited the vast and spectacularly ornate Dohany Street Synagogue. Built in the 1850s, this Moorish-style complex is where Joseph married Edie's mother, Louise. Next door at the Hungarian Jewish Archives Family Research Center (www.milev.hu), we made inquiries about the family's fate, but a search of Jewish community records turned up no new information. In early 1945, the bodies of 2,281 Jews, most of them unidentified, were buried in 24 mass graves in the synagogue's tranquil, ivy-covered courtyard. Perhaps, we thought (and hoped), this is where they lie, shaded by weeping white mulberry trees.

A quirk of history had made it possible for us, quite literally, to follow the footsteps — and coffee cups — of Edie's maternal grandfather, Vilmos Balla, a prominent Budapest economist and journalist. He wrote a dozen serious tomes about grain prices, agricultural taxes and other matters of economic import in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the time, editors and journalists often met — indeed, ran entire newspapers — from tables in their favorite cafes. That's how he came to write his only book that is still in print, a history of Budapest's coffee shops, published in 1927 and reissued with vintage photos (and 797 footnotes) in 2008. We decided to reconnect to the city by visiting some of his old haunts.

We found a single copy of Vilmos' book, "A Kaveforras" ("The Coffee Source") — on sale — at a bookshop called Alexandra on Andrassy Avenue, Budapest's Champs-Elysees. Coincidentally, the shop has one of Budapest's most ornate cafes on its upper floor. In Vilmos' time, the late 19th century hall, now occupied by Bookcafe Kavezo (kave is the Hungarian word for "coffee"), was part of a Parisian-style department store, so it's not mentioned in his book about coffeehouses, but the extravagant spirit of his gilded age is present in spades. Unfortunately, the neo-Renaissance murals, the gilded ceiling and the mirrored walls were more dazzling to look at than the pastries were tasty to eat.

The most outstanding cakes we found in Budapest, by far, were those served in a cafe that Vilmos did write about: the Central Kavehaz, founded in 1887. A century ago, intellectuals held court under the soaring ceilings, arguing passionately about the issues of the day. In our time, the Central's most epic confrontation takes place in silence inside the sparkling pastry case, pitting Budapest's iconic cake, the multilayered Dobos torte, against its bitter(sweet) Viennese rival, the richly chocolate Sacher torte.

Seated on maroon banquettes at a white marble table, we staged the confectionary equivalent of a heavyweight title fight. For the sake of convenience (and deliciously aware that we were committing sacrilege), we placed both contenders on the same porcelain plate — like having Ali and Frazier stay in the same hotel room the night before the big bout, you might say — but our tiny table was too small for any other arrangement.

The two triangular cakes, edging into each other's personal space, eyed each other with a mixture of aloofness and loathing. The Sacher torte, the word "Sacher" inscribed on top in looping chocolate script, proudly displayed its two layers of dark brown cake, separated by a thin smear of apricot jam. A pinkie's width away, the caramel stratum atop the Dobos torte gleamed a transparent orange, contrasting with the dull sheen of its five layers of yellow-white sponge cake, each sandwiched between layers of chocolate buttercream.

Forks were wielded and bites placed gently on salivating tongues. The Contender from Vienna (whose nickname rhymes if you try very hard) was supremely creamy, almost transcendental in its soft chocolatiness. But Jozsef Dobos' most famous confection, first served in 1885, held its own bite for bite, mixing crunch (the caramel) with a magical combination of sponginess and creaminess. My Hungarian friend Geri gave the thumbs up. "The best Dobos cake I've ever had," he declared. The Sacher torte, on the other hand, encountered some skeptical palates. I loved it, but Rachel pronounced it "kind of heavy" and Edie too was unenthusiastic. The winner, on points, was the Dobos torte. But we all agreed that a rematch was in order.

For something less formal and a bit more ethnic, we headed to the once-heavily Jewish neighborhood just north of the Dohany Street Synagogue. (In Vilmos' time, almost 1 in 4 residents of Budapest was Jewish.) Our goal was to find the city's best flodni, a semi-sweet cake whose layers of poppy seed, apple filling, walnut paste and plum jam are separated by thin strata of dough. Flodni could be described as the working-class Jewish answer to the upper-crust tortes of Sacher and Dobos.

At a kosher pastry shop called Frohlich Cukraszda, Edie took one look at the cake case and immediately became nostalgic for her mother's sour cherry tarts. The flodni, however, left her unmoved; she had never heard of it. As far as we can tell, although her parents were proud to be Jewish, they were as culturally Hungarian as they were Budapest bourgeois, which was very. Flodni, it would seem, was a bit too ethnic for their taste.

Flodni in hand, we headed to Vigado Square, a lovely little park next to the Danube, for a picnic. Dessert, eaten as trams trundled by, was scrumptious.

On our last night in Budapest we decided to have dessert at an establishment to which Vilmos devoted a full seven pages: the venerable New York Cafe, a center of Budapest's intellectual life from its opening in 1894 until the 1920s. While a pianist softly played melodies by Leonard Bernstein and Simon & Garfunkel, we surveyed both the menu and our over-the-top surroundings: spiral-shafted rococo columns, bulging wrought-iron balconies, chandeliers of crystal and frosted glass and plenty of brass-framed mirrors — great for the baby, who was delighted anew every time he spotted his reflection. Everything that could possibly have been gilded was. If the carriage of Ferenc Jozsef (1830-1916), king of Hungary — a.k.a. Franz Joseph, emperor of Austria — had clattered by, I would have been only modestly surprised.

From the voluminous menu in Hungarian, English and Italian (the cafe now is under Italian management), we ordered what may be the best pastry deal in town: the "Hungarian cake selection." It included an Esterhazy torte (walnut cake with white chocolate fondant on top), an almond and apple cream pastry called an almaspite and a Dobos torte — but, alas, no Sacher torte, so the epic rematch would have to wait. "That is Dobos!" Edie exclaimed after her first bite. I asked her if she could imagine her grandfather Vilmos hanging out at the New York. "Oh, yes," she replied, "very definitely. I can picture him talking and joking. He was a man who enjoyed life." A century later, we were enjoying life too.

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48 hours in Titanic Belfast

BELFAST (Reuters) - Belfast in the 21st century is developing into a chic capital of culture, character and chatter built on a proud industrial heritage which includes the world's most famous luxury liner.

A century after the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic - considered a marvel of engineering when it was built in Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyards - the modern city has experienced a seismic cultural shift since a peace deal in 1998 consigned "the troubles" of the 1960s-1990s to a footnote of European history.

Although there are still some rough neighborhoods that remain segregated and aren't tourist-friendly around July 12 (A public holiday when historic tensions can reignite), most of the main streets in central Belfast where warring paramilitary groups once used violence and preached intolerance are bustling with cultural hotspots, cafes and friendly faces.

Local correspondents help you to spend 48 hours enjoying some of the best places to visit - on the centenary of the Titanic.

FRIDAY 7 p.m. - Check into The Merchant Hotel, the New Chapter wing is ideal for business travelers with a bit of cash, who can try out a drink in the Jazz bar, consider buying the world's most expensive cocktail or take a lift to the hotel's hot-tub with a view over the city at night, overlooking Belfast's answer to the leaning tower of Pisa, the Albert clock.

8 p.m. - Take a short walk down the road to the city's newest shopping centre, Victoria Square, which is home to some of the most exclusive department stores in Northern Ireland. Climb the centre's spiral staircase to the lookout dome, with a 360-degree panoramic view across the city, taking in the slopes of cavehill to Samson and Goliath - two monolithic cranes that can be seen from most parts of the city. Or if you're lucky, you might be able to catch a rugby match at Ravenhill to watch Ulster take on a rival in the Heineken cup.

10:30 p.m. - Alternatively, visit the atmospheric bars dotted around the Cathedral quarter, with the John Hewitt bar as a local favorite, named after the late poet and nestled in Belfast's answer to Fleet Street - down the road from the Belfast Telegraph and Irish News offices (Let's not forget to mention the oldest continuous English newspaper - the News Letter is located behind the City Hall)

SATURDAY 10 a.m. - Start the day with a dose of history and take a red tour bus from outside Dixons electronic store on Castle Place, or catch a Back Taxi tour - visit http://www.belfasttours.com/for a more bespoke experience -- but both promise a rundown of the recent political history that helps explain the current state of affairs -- spiced up with some dry Ulster humor.

No doubt the tour will pass one of the most bombed hotels in Europe - the Europa hotel - where President Bill Clinton stayed on his peace trip to the North of Ireland in 1995.

12 p.m. - If you're looking for a pub lunch try the Crown Bar facing the Europa hotel - a tourist haven - but if it's a more local experience you're after, Cafe Vaudeville on Arthur street will entice you with its charm.

Both eateries are minutes away from Belfast's City Hall. A great view can be seen from hidden-away Linen hall library which also serves a healthy lunch - where the bookshelves hold dusty copies of C.S. Lewis, academic, novelist and theologian who lived in East Belfast during his childhood.

The reader may already be aware of anther East-Belfast great - Manchester United football player George Best, who was once quoted as saying: "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

1 p.m. - Take of a tour of the City hall, to digest the morning's history lesson, rather useful when looking around for evidence of the province's modern history, flags and murals.

Alternatively if you'd prefer to escape the city for a day - travel to the north coast to visit the Giants' Causeway - formed by cooling volcanoes revealing curiously shaped hexagonal stones - often explained as a mythical land bridge stretching out to Scotland that was laid by the giant Finn McCool so as not to get his feet wet.

Also unmissible in the area is the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge and Dunluce Castle, the latter precariously hangs off the edge of a cliff. If you need a stiff drink to help revive your spirits on the way home in damp weather, drop into the Bushmills whiskey Distillery for a sample.

7:30 p.m. - On the way to dinner in Botanic Avenue, Scalini's restaurant is a safe bet, an Italian menu with a dash of South Belfast-posh where part-time student types of rugby school Methodist College Belfast serve pasta and pizza without pomp but a sprinkling of the Northern Irish charm. For the business traveler try the Bo tree or even Beatrice Kennedy for a date all within 10 minutes walk from the centre.

9:30 p.m. - Spend the evening at your leisure. Take a stroll across the road to Queen's University Belfast, an impressive building illuminated at night, and a stone's throw away from film and art house the Queen's Film Theater for a dose of culture. Or if it's comedy you're after try the Belfast Empire on Botanic Avenue.

SUNDAY 9 a.m. - Head straight to the newly opened Titanic museum in the former docklands area, complete with rides, full-scale reconstructions, innovative interactive features and a replica dining room staircase. There is plenty for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet fans to get their teeth into here - so take your time to digest it all.

11 a.m. - On the way back to the hotel it is worth checking out the Lagan lookout - guarding the entrance to Belfast's arterial river, from which the expression "Do you think I came up the Lagan in a bubble?" derived, a shorthand term to describe the hardened humor of the citizens.

12 p.m. - If you're into political history - a trip to the lawn-laid expanses of Stormont, the seat of devolved power in Northern Ireland, where political leaders of Sinn Fein sit with the Democratic Unionist Party, a partnership unimaginable 30 years ago.

1 p.m. - Lunch can be arranged in the Stormont Hotel - a four star hotel which sits opposite the seat of power - a proper Northern Irish dish will generally include stew, or an Ulster Fry - similar to a full English but with extra, fatty bread including freshly baked soda farls.

2 p.m. - It is worth touring the murals - the bus tour passes a few main ones from East to West - including the peace walls, still erected between the Falls road and the Shankill - an experience that is sometimes compared to the segregation of societies in Israel and the West Bank.

More recently paramilitary-styled murals have been replaced by tributes to prolific Northern Irish striker David Healy, who even has a Christmas Carol dedicated to his name after he rose to fame with a strike to beat England 1-0, and a hat-trick against the Spaniards at Windsor Park in 2006.

3 p.m. - By now you will have dipped into Ulster history, culture, politics and the arts - but there is still time to stroll up and down Donegall Square, shop in the Victoria Centre or even listen to a concert in the Ulster hall, where Sergei Rachmaninoff is said to have once played to a private audience during World War Two, according to friends of a relative who organized the concert and this correspondent's old piano teacher.

4 p.m. - On the way back to the hotel, ponder the industrial powerhouse that Belfast used to be, famous throughout the world for shipbuilding, cotton producing and ropeworks, not to mention engineering and the many famous people it has yielded from Snooker player Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, to physicist Ernest Walton who studied in Belfast, golfer Rory McIlroy and film director Kenneth Branagh.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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