Our home away from home

We feel pretty lucky to be living where we are... Here are some pix to show you all our neighborhood.

Our house on Sharman Road in the Stranmillis neighborhood of Belfast. Side note: there is a Sharman Road (us), Sharman Drive, Sharman Park, Sharman Circle, Sharman Lane, etc... all in our neighborhood - HOW confusing!). On the map below, this is the marker in the middle of all of the others. From top to bottom, the street next to our house where Watson plays "football" (soccer) and rides his bike with his friends, the back of our house and garage (we are the corner unit of the semi-detached), the front of our house, and the back yard (with our hammock).

Our house is super-close to miles of biking, hiking, running and wildlife viewing (click on the link to the Map below to see where these places are):

1) The Lagan River Tow Path - a paved trail along our side of the Lagan River that goes for miles. Called a tow path because back in the day, boats were towed down the river by cattle on the sides of the river.

2) Belvoir Forest (they pronounce this "Beaver" - not sure why!) - within the city, a forest with lots of trails and a golf course (Info about Belvoir Forest) - we run in there on the trails.

3) Lagan Meadows - within the city, a nature preserve with trails and a meadow that supports a herd of very cute cattle - see my Running with the Bulls post for more about this great place.

Neighborhood map

We are LOVING being in a city neighborhood with amenities close by. Here's a pic of our "Green grocer" that is a 2 minute walk from the house - they have all sorts of fruit and veg, as well as a nice selection of meat, dairy and bread products. We stop here a couple times a week when we need something. Also right next to the grocer is a pharmacy, hair salon, wine/beer/liquor store, and coming soon - a coffee shop! Seriously, we've got it all! Map above shows location of this little strip of stores, it is the marker near the traffic circle. We also have a neighborhood pub and restaurant - Cutter's Wharf (on map above, is the marker right on the river) has a pub on the ground floor and a nice restaurant on the 2nd floor. During nice weather, their patio on the River is lovely and they sometimes have music.

Finally, if we can't (or don't feel like) walk or bike to something, we have a bus stop in our nighborhood. Watson LOVES riding the bus, especially the double deckers! The bus system is called Metro Translink and our route is the 8A route - we can get between Jamie's childminder's house, our house, the University, and City Centre all on this bus. We have bus passes, and it averages out to about 1 pound/ride ($1.50). Here's a pic of our bus! On the map, the bus stop is at the intersection of Stranmillis Rd and our road (Sharman).