Belfast is a vibrant community of many cultures and a city with a friendly large town feel. In Victorian times, it dominated the world in industrial achievement. The linen mills supplied a world-wide aristocratic and royal market, and the city’s proud tradition of shipbuilding sent its liners on international voyages from their Belfast dockland birthplace. The Titanic was built in Belfast, but it is typical of the shyness of the Ulster character that the ill-fated liner’s history has remained relatively secret. It has always been a city with a disdain for the over-effusive or boastful. The more recent history of the city has been well chronicled, but the clouds of the political troubles have turned out to have a silver lining, giving the city an enviable creative energy. Its nightlife is buzzing, with crowded live music venues catering for all tastes and old-fashioned traditional pubs lined up alongside new café-bars. An enviable range of top class restaurants gives a unique Ulster fl avour to a city which is re-inventing itself. “The craic (entertainment value) is 90,” as the local saying goes.