It took me a while last Friday, on a dark and dreary morning when everything seemed clothed in a grey veil, but I finally located the tourist information center in downtown Omagh, a town about 70-80 kilometers west of Belfast. It’s not like Omagh is a big town, but there is a serious lack of signage to point people toward the tourist information center (TIC). Should you ever need to find it, it’s located downstairs in the new Arts Center building. Once you get there, the staff is friendly, and there’s a nice coffee shop one floor above the TIC that serves up a decent scone in the morning.

I found the TIC only after asking in another office where I could get a map; it turned out that office, some type of government center, wasn’t the place for tourists, but the friendly lady there not only gave me a map, but also walked me outside and pointed me in the right direction, advising that it was definitely tricky to find the TIC entrance, so I was welcome to come back if I had any trouble.

That summed up my visit to downtown Omagh: there were many friendly people, but little guidance through signage to understand what I was looking at as I walked around town. I did pick up a nice pamphlet with a short walking tour of Omagh. The high points on the map were the old courthouse and a smattering of churches, both Protestant and Catholic. Plus, there was a small river with a picturesque bridge that factors into most of my interesting photos from the day. I mainly took photos with that new cellphone/camera, and experimented with adding effects to the scenes as I took the photos. It really was overwhelmingly grey that day in real life, so jazzing the scenes up a bit was definitely something to try.

In addition to the sights, the town was a mix of high-end clothing boutiques, pubs, and coffee shops. The latter category came in handy when it suddenly started raining in the afternoon. I ducked inside the nearest cafe and had a cup of tea while I debated dashing across the street to find out what kind of inexpensive umbrellas one could buy in downtown Omagh. However, the rain storm was brief, and the sky returned to the same grey it had been before the storm before I finished my tea, so I headed back to the hotel without a new umbrella.

BTW, I stopped in the TIC one last time to ask if they had a pamphlet that I could get about the history of Omagh, as there wasn’t much information in the little walking tour brochure itself, nor were there any plaques or other signs near the buildings around town. It turned out they did not have anything, though. As the TIC woman explained with all sincerity,   “Well, our town is only 400 years old, so there isn’t much history.”

Hmm. I’ll leave you with that thought and offer just a few photos of Omagh.