Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MEGHAN’S BABY TALK
Crowds cheer Prince Harry and Markle in surprise trip
MEGHAN Markle joked she and Prince Harry will soon need baby products during a visit to Northern Ireland yesterday.
Huge crowds cheered on the royal couple and when shown a newborn range, she said: “I’m sure at some point we’ll need the whole lot.” Meghan
PRINCE Harry and Meghan Markle received a very warm welcome in Belfast yesterday despite the bleak weather.
Huge crowds braved the elements and gathered in Great Victoria Street to wait patiently for the Royal couple to arrive.
Workers were even spotted hanging out of office windows to watch events unfold in the street below.
And huge cheers erupted when the couple pulled up in front of the Crown Bar at 1pm before they popped inside for a spot of lunch. As they were entering the historic pub, Prince Harry was seeing guiding his fiancee around the crown mosaic located at the entrance. Legend has it when the bar was built it was owned by a married couple – the husband was Catholic and the wife Protestant.
It is believed she wanted something to do with the monarchy in the bar so her husband agreed to have a mosaic of the crown outside the entrance, which is still there to this day.
But the irony was that everyone walking into the bar had to walk on the crown, therefore disrespecting it.
While inside the couple enjoyed traditional fayre after being seduced by the watering hole’s ornate interior.
Manager Andrew Dickinson confirmed Meghan had the Crown Bar Irish stew, while Harry tucked into sausage and champ.
He said: “They’re two of our most popular dishes and on a hectic day it would have kept them going.” Mr Dickinson added the pair were poured half a Guinness and half a Mourne Gold Pale Ale to sample, but also had soft drinks with their lunch.
After the private lunch Harry and Meghan went on a walkabout in Great Victoria Street, meeting hundreds of well-wishers waiting to meet them.
And even a downpour of rain did not stop the loved-up pair chatting to the crowds as there was no quick dash to the car, or cutting proceedings short. They were congratulated on their forthcoming wedding by many
and Ellen Hawthorne, 38, who married husband Nathan last August, even came up with a location for their honeymoon.
She said: “I suggested New Zealand because I went there last year for a month after my wedding.
“I told her it was lovely and she said she’d keep it in mind.”
At one stage Meghan was heard gushing over a posy of flowers one woman had put together from her garden. She told her: “These are so pretty, are they from your garden? How sweet, I love them, thank you for thinking of me, that’s really kind.”
One little girl in particular caught Meghan’s attention with her posy of yellow flowers and she spent a few moments speaking to her and the family.
Afterwards, the pair addressed Northern Ireland’s past when they visited the site of the former Maze paramilitary prison outside Lisburn where around 2,500 and young people gathered for the Amazing Space celebration.
The concert at the recently-built Eikon Centre saw teenagers from both sides of the community share their hopes and dreams of a peaceful and reconciled future.
And the couple ended their day at the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction. They were guided throughout the trip by chief executive of the centre Judith Owens who said Ms Markle praised the warmth of the Belfast people during her trip.
She added: “Meghan just said she had really enjoyed today, that the people of Belfast were so friendly and they had really enjoyed the mix of the different places where they had been.
“She said, ‘It has been lovely, everybody has been very warm and friendly’.”