I honestly think Belfast is one of Europe’s most underrated cities. I know I wouldn’t ever have come here without the lure of a friend, but every time I come there’s new things to do, amazing places to eat, new art to see and more.

This is Luke’s first visit and I’m keen to show him why I like it so much.

Belfast is a much smaller city than Melbourne but has an amazing art and music scene that, in some areas, makes it feel a lot like home.

We’re here for a week and a half and plan to visit Derry, go to the Game of Thrones studio tour and eat a lot of good local food. So goodbye Salzburg, maybe one day we’ll come back when it’s cooler and see more of the city.

We had to catch two flights to get from Salzburg to Belfast and flew with Lufthansa. The first flight was delayed but we had a big gap between the two. We had our break at Frankfurt airport, which is huge. So big the staff ride around on bicycles, which I’ve never seen at an airport before.

Fortunately we went to look for our gate with plenty of time to spare as we had to get between terminals and it was nearly a kilometre of moving walkways through a tunnel.

But it wasn’t long before we got to Belfast.

Danny picked us up, he lives less than 10 minutes from the city airport and we were very pleased the weather was cooler.

After going back to the house to pick up Ash and dropping off our bags it was out for dinner at a local place called Duad that had about five tables and a dj playing – so very Belfast.

Then Danny took us on a short walking tour of the local area. Here’s the local library masquerading as a storage facility.

Danny took us to to C.S. Lewis Square, which had this statue below and others of creatures from his books.

I kind of imagined Aslan a bit more imposing than this.

We finished off the night with visits to a couple of bars.

I stopped taking photos and have no idea what time we got home or went to sleep, but it wasn’t too late. We did watch the clip to Kylie Minogue’s new song, ‘Padam Padam’, as Peter is a huge fan and I’d seen people talking about it on TikTok.

Somehow the woman does seem to have aged since 1990!