After 25 minutes I'm starting to feel very guilty.
I'd said it would take us 20. The man in the tourist centre in Donegall Square reckoned 25. But it is now past that and there is still no sign of our destination.
The kids are moaning, but it is not them I'm worried about. It's J's mum.
She is well into her 70s [1]. It is quite muggy for an October afternoon. I am starting to have visions of her keeling over in the street.
At least we are on the right side of the River Lagan now. The Odyssey is in front of us. But where is the Titanic building? We walk around the corner. "Oh, there it is," I say. "Oh, that still looks like an awful long way away," I think. Five minutes at least. Maybe 10.
I look back at Emma. She is labouring. Maybe we should have taken a taxi after all.
This is typical bullish holiday behaviour on my part. Behaviour that inevitably backfires. My thinking goes like this: we are in Belfast. It is a small city. You see more if you walk. So we will walk.
It does not occur to me that septuagenarian women might not want to walk all the time.
After all, when we had gone to cross the Carrick-A-Rede Rope bridge near Ballintoy, Emma had decided not to bother. Maybe I should have taken the hint. Eating ice cream in Morelli's on the prom in Portstewart, that is fine [2]. But scrambling over rocks to get to a narrow wooden bridge that bounces up and down as you cross? Not so much.
We finally arrive at the Titanic building. Emma decides she needs to sit down for a few minutes. I decide that maybe I should make myself scarce for at least that long.
I wander around the building. It is a fine looking thing. Each of its four corners protrudes like the prow of a ship [3]. I get my phone out and start to take some pictures. A few minutes later it hits me. "When I'm in Edinburgh," I think, "I don't take pictures of Edinburgh Castle. When I walk up past the Falkirk Wheel I don't get my camera out. But here I am in Belfast snapping away. You know what this means? I'm now a tourist here. I'm not Northern Irish any more.
"And does that mean, Lord help me, I've finally become Scottish?"
We go round the exhibition. It's worth a visit. And when we finish I call for a taxi. At least I learn the lesson.
Less than a week later I'm back in the office. I'm phoning a public relations officer. "It's so lovely to hear a Scottish voice," she says.
Inside, I might be crying.
FOOTNOTES
[1] One doesn't reveal a lady's age.
[2] FYI, Joe Morelli left Italy some time in the early 1900s and landed in Greenock before ending up in Northern Ireland.
[3] The Titanic possibly. But I'm just guessing.
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