Liverpool: June 17 – Liverpool is the light to Belfast’s dark. Belfast has hideous Georgian monstrosities; Liverpool has stately Georgian row houses. Belfast’s modern buildings are soulless; Liverpool’s are sleek and powerful. Belfast reeks of defeat; Liverpool exudes energy and enthusiasm. Belfast has weedy lots and abandoned buildings; Liverpool has expansive parks and ubiquitous construction cranes. And Liverpool, of course, has the Beatles (Belfast has Van Morrison, who I like just fine, but come on).
I took a fabulous Beatles tour, which included a stop at the very cool Beatles museum (phenomenal photos, John Lennon’s glasses and white piano, and so much more), the current incarnation of the Cavern Club, John’s childhood home, Paul’s and George’s school, a drive past the Strawberry Fields institution, and best of all, a stop at Penny Lane, where the tour guide pointed out all the sites mentioned in the song (the shelter in the middle of the roundabout, the barber shop, the bank, etc.). Heaven!
Cobh and Cork: June 18 – Perhaps my greatest pleasure in traveling is going somewhere I’ve never been, wandering aimlessly, and talking to shopkeepers, bus drivers, or people on the street. Cobh (pronounced “Cove”), where we docked today, is tailor-made for that. It’s a small, quintessentially Irish village with quaint and colorful craft shops, an imposing cathedral, and, of course, unfailingly friendly locals. I spent the morning wandering through town (you can see the whole place in a couple of hours). While there are almost as many Chinese restaurants as pubs, the only other sign of globalization was a Papa Johns.
This afternoon I took a walking tour of Cork, a nearby city that recently grew from 100,000 to 200,000 – not due to remarkable fecundity but because the official city limits were expanded. Cork is 1400 years old, give or take, but other than some beautiful limestone buildings (including a Protestant bank and Catholic bank on opposite corners) and the Finn Barr (or Finbarre, or various other spellings, just like Chanukah) Cathedral, most of the structures post-date a devastating 1920 fire. Cork is a marvel of reinvention – the Ford and Dunlop factories that closed in the 1980s were replaced by Pfizer and Apple, among other high-tech operations.
PuffinlessTravel 
I always heard Belfast wasn’t a good place to visit but I feel like it just doesn’t get enough attention, everyone kind of just forgets Northern Ireland exists sometimes but I never liked that kind of attitude by other Brits.
Happy you enjoyed Liverpool, only been there once but we did a Beatles tour too! It was a lot of fun, it was quite empty when we went so it felt a bit odd but still a joy to visit though I hope it was busier when you visited!
A friend of mine who had visited Belfast the year before felt that I was too critical of it. He spent more time there than I did, so I’d yield to his more positive impression.