Belfast: 3rd  - 7th April 2014

Written by Alice 

Less than 2 weeks after coming home from Tenerife is was back on the plane and off to Belfast. And I wonder why I am so skint. This trip was with my university trampoline club to go and compete in ISTO and consume large amounts of alcohol. To be honest we didn’t actually experience anything vaguely cultural, historical or educational about the city of Belfast but I had an amazing time all the same.

The wonderful people of Hull uni trampoline club

We were up at 3am on Thursday which is the time which I am normally coming home from a social any other week. We flew the shortest flight I have ever been on and before we knew it we were in Belfast. This trip was also very different to Tenerife as being one of the four committee members on the trip I was involved in organising it which was a new experience. Somehow we made it to Linen hostel where were staying in one piece. After reading the reviews of this place we were expecting something awful but to be honest we got what we paid for. And seeing that the whole place was booked out by Tramps it made it a good laugh for the weekend. A tip for you though, I would not recommend attempting to cook pasta for 12 people in a tiny, crowded, kitchen. It took us over an hour to boil the pan. On the first night we arrived at the social way too early but it was still a good night once it got going. It ended in a takeaway where apparently the kebab was made of cat…

It was that sort of night....

Friday night we were out at Queens’s university student union. The clubs in Belfast seem to end pretty early. Both nights the bar in the union shut at 1am. At home you would expect 2am at the earliest. Saturday night was a bigger night as we left the club at 1.30am but ended up in McDonalds at 5.50am. I won’t go into what we got up to in that gap as I don’t think the internet needs to know. I’ll leave it up to your own imagination. We were the last club standing in the hostel that night which I am proud of. The streets and roads of central Belfast were completely empty at 5am time which was again unexpected as I would not expect a city centre to be like this. Maybe I’m just too used to London.

Pole dancer extraordinare 

Toilet selfie, Obviously 

The morning after

In between the drinking we were competing in the Irish student trampoline open. All of us were in novice on Friday apart from Lee who was in Inter-advanced on Saturday. Although no one placed we did pretty well considering 4 of the team had never competed before. I am very proud of all of them. The competition was at the lagan Valley complex in Lisburn which was a bit out of Belfast city centre. In the same building there was a water park which we went to on Saturday and I would recommend. It was a lot of fun.

I can fly.

Tramps in action

On the final day we had time to take in some of Belfast before our flight. However being a very tired, hungover and incredibly skint group of students we only managed to wander around the city centre and then find a whetherspoons. I don’t think we saw all that Belfast has to offer.

This was honestly one of the best weekends of my life. I have never laughed so hard for so long in one weekend before. Although the weekend mainly consisted of sitting in a sports hall, airports and slightly dodgy hostel it really does prove that with the right group of people, and maybe a dodgy tour item or 2, you can have fun anywhere.