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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Belfast hopes Titanic can help refloat its waterfront

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — This city's newest tourist attraction is supposed to be about more than just a 100-year-old tragedy.

Titanic Belfast seeks to reclaim the ship as a manufacturing triumph and anchor redevelopment in a fairly barren section of waterfront.

The museum, which opened March 31, includes sections on Belfast's industrial past (linen was big) before moving on to the rise of the ship-building industry.

There are details about how Titanic was built (including more on rivets than you ever thought you'd know) and fitted (carpet samples, anyone?).

And there are re-created first-, second- and third-class cabins of the White Star ship.

But what was my children's favorite part? The footage of the wreck on the ocean floor, presented at the end.

My 8-year-old son's interest had waned a bit in the museum, but that footage ended things on a high note. My 12-year-old daughter was intrigued nearly all the way through, spending two-plus hours.

One glitch: We were told we'd wait 40 to 50 minutes for an amusement-style "ride" through a simulated shipyard.

"It's a fun experience," we were told, "but it's only six minutes."

We skipped it.

You may be surprised that this museum has no artifacts salvaged from the wreck.

You should not be surprised that there's merchandise. A stuffed bear dressed like a cabin boy, wearing a Titanic cap, was about $24. Titanic Tea costs about $4.30 for 80 bags.

This after adult admission fees of about $22; children 5-16 rates are half that; under 5 free. The museum website, titanicbelfast.com recently announced it was selling out of tickets deep into April, 100 years to the month that the luxury liner sank in the North Atlantic.

Waiting to visit may have other benefits anyway, as nearby attractions, such as the Nomadic, take shape. The only remaining White Star Line ship was used to ferry passengers to Titanic. It's expected to open in the fall.

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Titanic quiz: How much do you know about the doomed cruise?

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By Catharine M. Hamm Los Angeles Times Travel editor

7:30 a.m. CDT, April 13, 2012

Friday the 13th seems to be a good day to write about the Titanic-- not just because we find the number 13 creepy but because the cruise was then underway, 100 years ago, with not a hint (at least, not to the passengers) of trouble in sight. It was the most luxurious ship of its day -- a fact that it certainly didn't try to hide. Indeed, some would say the boasting about the megaship -- remember, they said it was unsinkable -- may have tempted fate. Meanwhile, we'd like to tempt you to take this quiz and find out how much you really know about this maritime nightmare. There are 15 questions and a bonus. Bon voyage.

1.What was the nickname of the Titanic?

a. Bruiser

b. Millionaire's Special

c. The Drinking Man's Ship

d. Lots of Luxe

2. The Titanic had three letters in front of its name. What were the three letters and what did they stand for?

a. RMS Titanic--Royal Majesty’s Ship

b. RMS Titanic--Royal Mail Ship

c. MV Titanic—Majesty’s Valor

c. MV Titanic—Motorized Vessel

3. Who was the captain of the Titanic?

a. Edward J. Smith

b. Edward S. Jones

c. Edward J. Smith-Jones

d. Francesco Schettino

4. The Titanic was being constructed alongside another ship, a sister ship. What was the name of that ship?

a. The Olympic

b. The Carpathia

c. The Andrea Doria

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Why are we still so fascinated with the Titanic?

HALIFAX, Canada — Simple, says the gravedigger. It's about the movie.

No, says the academic. It's about the money.

Absolutely not, says the model-ship builder. It's about people.

This is what happens when you ask why the sinking of the Titanic continues to fascinate us. The question has a special resonance in Halifax, a rainy, foggy port and capital of Nova Scotia that inherited perhaps the nastiest of all Titanic tasks. It was the seamen of Halifax, nearest major port to the sinking, who were sent out to collect corpses and wreckage in the days after the Titanic went down on April 15, 1912. Putting to sea with cargoes of ice, coffins and embalming fluid, they collected more than 300 bodies, buried many of them at sea, sent about 50 for burial elsewhere and buried the rest here.

"I can remember before that movie come out, there wasn't very many people coming to visit the burial sites," said John Rooke, a gravedigger and longtime Haligonian, as residents of Halifax are known. ("That movie," of course, is James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster.) As he spoke, a hard rain pounded the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where 121 Titanic victims are buried.

People come here to see the rows of markers all with the same date of death: April 15, 1912. And the curious have other places to explore as well.

The just-opened Titanic Belfast attraction woos customers with nine exhibition galleries full of details on the ship's construction in Northern Ireland. In New York, the auction house Guernsey's has been taking written offers and hoping to reap tens of millions of dollars from the winner-take-all sale of 5,500 artifacts raised from the wreck. Temporary Titanic exhibitions have been staged in Las Vegas and San Diego. Permanent exhibitions continue in Branson, Mo., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where privately owned for-profit museums are devoted to the doomed ship. The 3-D version of "Titanic," which hit theaters April 4, grossed $25.7 million in its first five days.

Clearly, Titanic sells. But why exactly? Plenty of people still wrestle with that question.

One is J. Joseph Edgette, folklorist emeritus at Widener University in Chester, Pa., who has made Titanic his life's work and can tell you that 12 survivors are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, a dozen more at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Edgette can tell you about Robert Douglas Spedden, the boy who survived the Titanic's sinking at age 6, only to die three years later in what might have been the first fatal auto accident in Maine.

For the last eight years, Edgette has been tracking down graves and cenotaphs (markers for those whose bodies are elsewhere) of Titanic victims and survivors, inspecting cemeteries in Halifax, New England and beyond. It's impossible, Edgette said, to deny the central role of wealth in the Titanic phenomenon.

"If you take the combined wealth of the passengers in first class on that ship, no other list of passengers even came close to that kind of wealth," Edgette said. "And probably half of the first-class passengers were Americans, and they were from the wealthiest of the wealthy of this country."

Yet upstairs at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, where volunteers John Green and Gerald Wright have been laboring for two years over a model of the ship, the big-money theory is about as welcome as a stray iceberg.

"It's all about people," said Green. For all the hundreds of hours he has spent squinting at 2-inch lifeboats and tinkering with railings with the circumference of toothpicks, Green said, he's convinced that the key to the Titanic story is "the human aspect, the reality of how individuals dealt with the tragedy…. Never mind the money. That's a crock, as far as I'm concerned."

Ah, but down at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market, which dates to 1750, Euen Wallace sees other forces at work.

As crowds filed in on a Saturday morning, Wallace, the operations manager, looked on from an upstairs perch in the market's new building, replete with newfangled energy-saving features. Maybe the real theme of the Titanic story, Wallace said, is the limits of technology.

"As we move forward," he said, "we're constantly building new things that are newer and better and invincible, but something as simple as a block of ice can bring it all tumbling down."

After a brief boom in the aftermath of the movie's initial release, visits to Halifax's Maritime Museum and the city's Titanic cemeteries slowed from a torrent to a trickle, many Haligonians say. And in the local annals of disaster, they sometimes add, Titanic is neither the newest nor the deadliest. It's not even the only White Star ship.

In April 1873, 39 years before the launch of Titanic, the White Star Line's SS Atlantic ran aground and sank near Halifax, killing 562 of 952 aboard, one of the worst steamship accidents of the 19th century.

Five years after Titanic, in December 1917, a World War I munitions ship collided with another vessel in Halifax Harbor, touching off a vast explosion that killed about 2,000 people and injured an estimated 9,000. Massachusetts doctors were among the early emergency teams to reach the site, prompting thankful responses from throughout Nova Scotia.

In September 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the sea near Peggy's Cove, about 30 miles from Halifax, killing all 229 people aboard.

When the9/11attacks disrupted air traffic throughout North America in September 2001, Halifax Stanfield International Airport took in 40 diverted flights, and the city sheltered about 8,000 passengers for up to four days, prompting thankful responses from throughout the U.S.

In other words, Halifax has seen catastrophe from many angles. Tour guide Blair Beed — whose grandfather worked as an undertaker's assistant when the city's curling rink was converted into a makeshift Titanic morgue — likes to mention that when shepherding cemetery visitors.

And, of course, Beed, the author of "Titanic Victims in Halifax Graveyards," has his own ideas about why we're still retelling the tale of the Titanic.

Naturally, he said, movies, celebrity and "women in their gowns getting in the lifeboats and waving goodbye with their silken hankies" are part of the picture. But there were subtle factors too.

For instance, Beed said, because it took time for the ship to sink, "there were survivors who could recall what other people were doing at the time of the sinking." Moreover, he said, "it was a slow news day. There was no war, there was no famine, there were no great disasters other than the Titanic."

And a century later, the great ship's wake continues to ripple.

chris.reynolds@latimes.com

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