St. Geroges Market & a Night at the Docks

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond",
"What does?"
"This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.”

- Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

It takes a few days for Belfast to introduce herself to you. She holds herself aloof, in stony silence, quietly deciding if you are worth her while. Belfast has a past. A past that is complex, troubling, interesting - a past which still thrums with stirring intensity beneath the cobblestones and bricks. As you walk you begin to feel Belfast, you become aware of the many layers that you will never fully grasp. As an outsider one will never know Belfast, but one can come to see the beauty in the shadows and appreciate the grit and tenacity of a city redefining itself.

We spent some time at St. Georges Market, originally built in 1890.

I loved the Market.

Housed in a lofty, airy building - wares of all sorts were arrayed on tables of all sizes. Food, underwear, flowers, lightbulbs - anything really. We wandered, explored and examined all the tables. I knew that there was one thing that we needed to find - the strawberries. My grandpa told me that I needed to try the strawberries in Ireland, if that was all I did. I found field strawberries at the Market and they tasted of fresh air, the colour green and happiness.

That night we went to the docks. Sitting in the slip dock of where the Titanic was built, we watched the sun set. It was cold. I was cold, and if anyone knows me - this is not always the best combination. But sitting on those stones where so much history came to pass - I came to the realization that this was a moment in which all the variables would never coalesce again. So I sat there with Cody upon some cobblestones that once held unsinkable iron, in the wind, in the cold, and watched the Irish sun set on the indifferent and imperious sea.