Foreign Perspectives

All being well, we’re heading off to the maritime festival in Belfast shortly.

It’s one of the original festivals (which include the summer carnival and autumn film festival) that were started before we began to get large numbers of tourists. In fact, the last time we were there was just before the big jump in the number of tourists so it’ll be interesting to see how they cope (not well if last year was anything to go by!).

It’s one of the natural festivals for Belfast in that there’s quite a substantial history of things naval including, of course, the construction of the Titanic. Last time we were at it, the kids wouldn’t go on the baby Titanic that was there as they were sure it would sink! Worth pencilling in is the opening of the major Titanic exhibition in 2012 (the hundredth anniversary of the sailing).

Anyway, must tootle on as we’ve several other things to do today as well as the festival.

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Over the next few days it’s going to be pretty hectic here as the Spanish are coming, as usual for their pre-Easter break.

Also, as usual, they wait ’til the last minute to book. Just a few weeks ago, we had nobody down for the next few days yet as of tomorrow we’re pretty much full until Monday and everyone is from Spain.

The last minute business seems to be getting worse each year as we had several days worth of bookings arriving this morning including the first double booking for the year. The last minute aspect is something that none of the booking systems are really geared up for in that it can be several hours between the guest booking and the system notifying us of that booking which, of course, is plenty of time for a competing reservation system to slip in another booking for the same dates.

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If you’re thinking of a visit to the Uffizi in Florence then you’ll find it worthwhile to have a look at the virtual Uffizi before you go.

The Uffizi is, like most major European museums, just too large to take in with a single trip and this site will help you to concentrate your visit on the works which most interest you rather than ending up trying to run around all over the museum and ending up taking nothing in properly (a trap that’s surprisingly easy to fall into).

Although the site contains photos of most of the works in the museum, you’ll still want to see the originals which are very, very different than looking at a photograph of them, no matter how well it might have been taken. If you’re aiming to see specific paintings, do bear in mind that the museum change the exhibitions from time to time so you’re not necessarily guaranteed to see all of the works that are shown on the site (although, obviously really major works are permanently on display).

To help you in planning your visit the site follows the plan of the galleries themselves but, of course, with a number of search options that you can use. In addition to that you can buy museum tickets and there’s information on a range of tours that you can take of Florence.

This is one of the most complete museum sites that I’ve come across with an almost comprehensive set of photos of the works and lots of information about each one.

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