Derry-Londonderry.

There are only five cities in Northern Ireland, hardly any large towns and only two of the cities are within reasonable daytripping distance from Moon's Dad's home. We had planned our trip to Belfast to coincide with our last day before returning the car to the airport - we will definitely be doing it a lot differently next time - so the other city we could visit was Derry-Londonderry: 2013's City of Culture.

We managed to plan our visit on a day where not much culture was happening and maybe should have chosen it to coincide with their Walled City Tattoo, but we didn't think. Derry is a city with interesting history in terms of 'The Troubles' and the way it is laid out. The architecture is wonderful but I wish more cities and towns would think about their USPs a little more; so many places we've visited lately are the same as anywhere else, with the same shops and the same ideas. Derry has such a rich history that - as City of Culture - they could probably create a more unique identity for themselves, they already have a their neat 'LegenDerry' tagline, it just needs to be backed up a bit further.

Before looking around the Walled City, we started off our tour of Derry at the Riverwatch Centre, not somewhere to spend a day but a good way to kill 45 minutes, especially with the beautiful weather we had one the day, there's a very pretty walk to do along the river. We grabbed some lunch at The Sandwich Co. in The Diamond, I'd definitely recommend it, I loved the quirky décor and the food was just simple stuff but delicious. We were only in Derry for a few hours before heading back and I think that was around enough time but I'm sure we would have spent there longer if we'd picked a more eventful day.







Riverside selfie ♥








The Diamond.










These were the pictures when I was looking through all my photos from the holiday that I was most pleased with. I'm pretty impressed with the performance my little Nikon J1 put out, so pleased it's come back completely fixed with no more problems (*touch wood - unlike my phone).