2 years ago
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Columbia Hillen
When suave doormen impeccably dressed successful silk suits and top-hats greet you warmly astatine the door, you cognize you’re successful for a treat.
That’s the archetypal content upon arriving astatine the 146-room, 5-star Fitzwilliam Hotel in Belfast, superior of Northern Ireland. And it’s 1 that lasts.
Located beside the Grand Opera House connected Great Victoria Street successful the bosom of the downtown area, it’s hard to ideate a much convenient spot from which to research the city’s sights.
Columbia Hillen
Enter from 1 of 2 abstracted entrances disconnected engaged streets and you’re met by a spacious lobby featuring plentiful seating and 2 awesome sets of publication shelves comprising a wide diverseness of speechmaking matter, from novels and biographies to photographic books depicting the past of Belfast, and Ireland successful general, arsenic good arsenic the nation’s sporting successes successful rugby and soccer.
Columbia Hillen
The colour strategy is simply a vivid, eye-catching one, with leather couches, wall-padding and the backdrop to the reception table each successful pinkish contrasting with grey floor-tiling, partition columns, carpet and soft, throne-like seating. Twenty-foot high-glass walls look the Grosvenor Road, 1 of Belfast’s main thoroughfares. An unfastened gas-fed occurrence adds a interaction of homey comfort. Upstairs, ambient-lighted corridors, mirrored doors and vintage partition lamps harken backmost to a bygone era, a aureate property successful the colorful beingness of this affable bluish Irish metropolis cradled by the Black Mountain and the River Lagan. Vintage rotary dial telephones successful the rooms adhd to the consciousness of nostalgia.
Columbia Hillen
Our room, 711, offered panoramic views not lone implicit the downtown area, but much specifically implicit the imposing Victorian duplicate greenish towers implicit Inst, a historical 19th period college, and, connected the adjacent horizon, to a geological diagnostic known locally arsenic ‘Napoleon’s Nose’ jutting retired from rolling, grassy upland slopes.
Columbia Hillen
Comfortable furnishings included a turquoise Queen Anne benignant sofa, a ample TV, a agelong penning table with smoked solid panels supra and 4 elongated hanging ceiling lamps either broadside of the room. Interestingly, the achromatic table and headboard, adjacent the tv basal and charcoal carpet reminded maine of chic Coco Chanel ambience.
Columbia Hillen
Food with drinks are served astatine tall, crimson, angular Regal-like seating astatine agelong tables successful the restaurant, with different guests astatine 1 end. Hanging rectangular-shaped lamps resembling window-sill pots with you’d ideate successful a personage performer’s dressing room. Colorful framed sketches of assorted well-known Irish drinks specified arsenic Bushmills whiskey and Guinness enactment the walls.
Columbia Hillen
Steak, salmon, venison, hake, duck… the paper is simply a generous one. After a agelong day’s travel from France, I chose a starter of basil and olive marinated burrata with crispy prosciutto, rocket leaves and sourdough breadstuff and a sizzling sirloin arsenic a main with bony marrow, butter, roast plum tomato, portobello mushroom and Béarnaise sauce. So tender was the meat, determination was hardly request for a knife. I chose my entree successful portion due to the fact that of the intriguing accompaniment - boxty, a tasty accepted Irish crockery of mashed and grated pan-fried potatoes successful a heavy buttermilk batter, a transverse betwixt hash-browns and pancakes.
Columbia Hillen
Other entree options see compressed pork belly, duck bosom with confit leg, cookware fried oversea bream fillet with prawn and dill croquette and rack of Irish lamb marinated successful Ras El Hanout spice premix of cardamom, nutmeg, anise, mace, cinnamon, ginger, assorted peppers, and turmeric.
Though precocious astatine night, I could not defy a delectable dessert - cocoa and nutella fondant with vanilla legume ice-cream. The cocoa was the acheronian variety, the healthier kind, which helps maine flooded immoderate pangs of guilt I mightiness endure (rare though they are). I erstwhile work that acheronian cocoa contains serotonin, which helps unbend some assemblage and mind, and I’m sticking to that belief.
Columbia Hillen
Private eating is besides disposable for groups of up to 22 guests.
Aside from classical cocktails I was impressed with the section drinks connected offer - particularly gins and whiskies, the erstwhile from adjacent towns specified arsenic the Shortcross marque from Downpatrick successful region Down and May Loag from Old Carrick successful Monaghan; and the second being Lir from a distillery successful the Glens of Antrim and Titanic Distillers successful Belfast.
Beers besides person beardown section flavour - including lager and ale from Whitewater Brewery successful the adjacent agrarian municipality of Castlewellan. The vino enactment traversed countries arsenic divers arsenic Romania, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Argentina.
Columbia Hillen
Breakfast is besides important with a big of options speech from the buffet, including the ‘full Irish.’ There’s nary request for lunch, possibly not adjacent dinner, aft this upland of sausage, bacon, eggs, tomato, achromatic and achromatic pudding, mushrooms, and more.
For the much disciplined, the healthier mentation is toasted sourdough breadstuff with smoked salmon, avocado, plot herbs and escaped scope eggs, oregon adjacent the ‘fresh catch,’ kippers and smoked haddock.
Lacking a spa, gym oregon pool, The Fitzwilliam Hotel does person a ground-floor cocktail bar, a cosy abstraction of tea-lights and intimate snugs, with unrecorded play music.
Belfast is an unhurried, charming metropolis good worthy visiting and The Fitzwilliam Hotel is good worthy considering arsenic a prime accommodation option.
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