Another one for all you shoppers out there. Once you've had your fill of shopping in the city…read morecentre (see my reviews on CastleCourt and Victoria Square), there's still a few places left to burn out the credit card. Just a five minute drive from the city centre, Boucher Road has quite a few shops in it, most of which are located in Boucher Crescent Retail Park or Shane Retail Park (see my review on Shane retail park). There are men and women's clothing shops (River Island, Next, Burton, the Jeanery...), a sports shop, HMV, Starbuck's, Boots... the list goes on. There's a hell of a lot of space dedicated to parking here, but it can still be very difficult to get a space on a Saturday or Sunday. It's not a mall type place where you can get lost in, it's one of those places where the shops are all lined up in a row and you come out of one shop and into the next one - good for methodical shoppers, or those who don't have a lot of time. The downside is that the traffic on the Boucher Road can be crazy between 4 and 6p.m. But, if you're a visitor and you're out for a day's shopping, get yourself a 'day ticket' (see my Translink review) and you can take a trip up here before/after shopping in the city centre.

Boucher Road Crescent Retail Park is a handy spot for shopping if you don't fancy going into the…read moreCity Centre. It has a huge variety of shops including River Island, Outfit, Lipsy, Newlook, Next, Boots and much much more. Oh and there's a few car manufacturers nearby if you fancy treating yourself to a new Audi TT

The magpie that I am loves sparkly things, and everything sparkles in here, and today so did the…read moreservice. I was just walking through to the Paperchase part and accidentally, totally deliberately, found myself in front of my favourite perfume. As I took a sneaky sniff a glamorous assistant appeared by magic and suggested that they had special gift sets round the corner if it was something I was interested in. When I explained I wasn't looking for a gift, it was just something I loved, she said she hoped Santa would bring me some and rushed off to a drawer where she produced some samples of it for me to 'keep me going til Christmas'. What a sweetie! Yes, House of Fraser is not cheap, but with lovely service like that (which has happened before) I'll always be back. I'll just wait until the sales.

I generally shop online for H of F. As too be honest the layout of the shop freaks me out…read more Of, I may on occasion, rush to the Tom form aftershave and give myself a blitz. But no one can prove nothing. Don't feel that the store has any soul.

The main reason I visit Debenhams is for their huge beauty and fragrance section. I recently took a…read morefaulty makeup brush to Debenhams without a receipt and this was replaced with no questions asked - altho I think this was due to the person who served me - a different sales assistant may not have been as helpful. I have also been to visit Debenhams a few times recently as they seem to have the best euro rate at the moment. If you exchange over a certain amount of euros you get a £5 off voucher to use that day - excludes beauty and fragrance.

My review isn't actually for Debenhams shop, we all know what they do. But I stumbled across…read moresomething interesting at the Benefit counter yesterday! A Brow bar! Yes you can go to the lovely benefit girls and get your crows, plucked shaped and waxed! Then have your make up re done by the same lovely girls right after! How great an idea is this! I thought it was great and was absolutely heartbroken I had only that morning attacked my own with the tweezers, i will certainly be coming here in a weeks time! Very cool!

On a recent shopping expedition I managed to lose my wallet, It transpired that I had dropped it in…read moreDunnes Belfast. As I retraced my steps and was ringing around I was fortunate enough to call Chriss (Not sure of spelling) She was very helpful and after establishing that it was indeed my wallet informed me that they had it. I called and collected it. Tremendous help from good people. Thanks Guys

Wow Dunnes has actually gone downhill quite a bit since my last visit to the Belfast megastore. I…read morepopped in when I was over here in October to see if much had changed and all in all, I was disappointed. I started with the top floor which was totally devoid of any people. Just overpriced homewares. Even the restaurant was all boarded up, and to enter the toilets you had to either insert 10p or get a token from a staff member if you show your receipt! It reminded me of the old dated system in BHS! The lift I used was violent and shakey, and it felt like the floor was about to fall through. Some maintenance in this department please Dunnes Even the food hall was a disappointment - dwarfed into a small hole at the back corner of the shop. Much smaller than I remember. It's all downhill from here. Sorry Dunnes, but I'll be taking my custom to Debenhams and House of Fraser...

For my 345th Yelp, I am sharing one of my favorite shopping places! I enjoy shopping at M&S,…read morewhenever I am in the UK or Ireland. I can count on them for clothes that suit both my style and my budget. Today they were short staffed. Very few registers open and no one on the selling floor to help when I needed it. This afternoon I purchased some jeans for myself, some toner and I grabbed my husband a few wee colognes from this place. The toner was a great buy for my travel weary skin. The colognes are outstanding, make hubby smell like the dashing Irishman that he is, and the jeans hit these curves correctly. Terrific food selections as well. Once I had them cater an entire Christmas Dinner. This was several years back. But again, Mark & Spencer's quality was evident; their prices are fair. Again...They never disappoint.

I was excited to visit a M&S while visiting Belfast and this particular location didn't quite live…read moreup to my expectations; as far as department stores go, this one felt like a basic Macy's back in the US. There was a major sale underway and the store was busy - but I didn't see anything that looked much higher end than an H&M.

This department store is fantastic! It is one of three stores in the Province. There are two in…read moreEast Belfast and the other one is in Ballymena. You can buy everything for the house from cleaning products to furniture and the nice thing is that the prices are very reasonable. I love browsing round the store as I always come out with something a little bit different for the house and if you are looking for a gift with a difference either for a wedding or child's birthday you can always count on finding it in store. So if you are looking for something of good quality and reasonably priced give this store a visit. You will always find the best selection of Christmas trees and decorations at that seasonal time of year which takes the hassle out of hunting around. Go on , you won't be disappointed !

Wyse Byse is a Belfast institution. It is what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, Big Ben is to London,…read moreand the Leaning Tower is to Pisa. Well, maybe not quite, but it's certainly up there. It has everything you could possibly want, within reason of course. Furniture, stationery, toys, household appliances, confectionary, toiletries to name but a few. In fact there's so much variety that nearly every time I go and attempt to find what I need, I have to ask a member of staff where it is located. And they nearly always have it. In recent weeks I have purchased nail brushes, non-powdered gloves, a stapler, huge bags of sweets, hairspray...all cheap as chips too. Probably cheaper than chips to be fair, they're awful expensive these days. Cannot recommend it enough. Go and grab yourself a bargain!

Laura Ashley, certainly one of the best know and most loved department/homewares stores in the…read moreworld and one that if you are thinking of going to this review isn't really going to sway you all that much, if at all. You can get everything in here to made a home which is to say it has all sorts of soft furnishings, furniture, homewares and everything else that you can think of. The prices seem quite high to me, but thats just me and I don't have my own house but I don't really know. But I can say that nothing really struck me as paricularly cheap and this doesn't strike me as the kind of place that you would go if you were on a budget. The staff seem dead on enough and were friendly anytime I have been in, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to go the extra mile.

Laura Ashley is a lovely juvly store for lovely ladies and yummy mummies…read more They stock a lot of classy furniture, plush sofas and soft furnishings and lot's of other kinck nacks to make your home look beautiful. The kinda furniture you could imagine your posh aunt having. They do a lot of floral stuff, so if you like Cath Kidson and Avoca n all hat then you'll love Laura Ashely. The prices are high, but if you're an older lady decking out your home than why not splash the cash. The clothes here can be sometimes cool, floral tea-dresses with a 50's stepford wife kinda vibe, mostly they're aimed at women over thirty so not really for me. I still like to look though! I did once get a Laura Ashley little pink floral mini dress in Oxfam in Dublin for a fiver! Score!

Lidl is a German-owned discount store which seems to have done quite well here in the last eight or…read morenine years. No-frills discount stores are pretty well received in Belfast, and that's led to Lidl opening several stores over here. This is a pretty spacious shop, and is usually well-stocked. They're also trying to make a name for themselves for being inexpensive for fruit and vegetables. I'm convinced I kept one of their lines of stock in production - Moordale's 100% beef burgers. They have a great bite to them, and when they're on special offer they're only £2.39... a great addition to any barbeque. Lidl has a lot of special offers, many of which are detailed in their promotional leaflets, with offers on a weekly and fortnightly basis. And it's not just food that they do, they sell items like DIY tools, outdoor furniture, plants and flowers... I think it just depends on what they've managed to get a good bulk discount on. They also have a selection of beers and wines, and usually have special offers on selected lines. Worth checking out.

This is a decent sized Next store and has all the essentials you'll be looking for - shoes, tops,…read morejeans, etc. It has both male and female clothing and caters for all occasions, whether you're looking for something to throw on while you lounge about the house or you need a whole new get up for a night out, this place should be able to accommodate you. Female shoppers will also be glad to hear that the majority of the floor space is dedicated to their clothing, with the men's making up the minority of the shop. There's also a homeware department on the first floor.

Next stores will always be engrained on my mind due to their 6am sale starts. Standing in a…read moreridiculous queue, with hundreds of other insane shoppers who braved the frosty weather to get a bargain. Madness. The next store situated at Boucher Retail Park hasn't the same level madness attached to it but is relatively bulging with promise and purchases. The Next clothing is range has always received great reviews as its washing quality is outstanding as well as the fit and finish of garments. You do pay for these finer details though, hence why there's such a rush at winter and summer sales. This store is well laid out with simple floor plans to promote products and key lines. The mannequins are always well dressed with a great array of accessories to match the themed outfits. What I always like about this store in particular is the range of footwear they have on display. They always have numerous size four and fives which are the popular choice for ladies of all ages.

This is a chiefly a foodhall and cafe but the cafe and the public toilets are shut courtesy of the…read moredarn Wu flu. We are becoming tired of this damn virus and it's tedious to have to queue outside to limit numbers, which isn't pleasant in our cool, damp climate. As I've said in other reviews M&S is my food store of choice and full praise to the staff who turn up to work in these strange times. It's also not simply because of the ace quality that it's always my first choice, for me it's trust. Their in - house bakeries and deli's are fab, their cheeses are fab and their ready meal choices are ace too to name only a very few of the great choices. And I'm not alone they have a solid, loyal customer base. They'll do the right thing. I don't have the same faith in Asda, Tesco, etc. I see Waitrose in the same way as M&S but we still don't have Waitrose in NI - they did intend to set up here years ago now but a very wealthy but self-serving Lisburn businessman funded legal challenges that kept them out and they lost interest. This M&S is in a pretty large industrial estate that runs alongside the M1 motorway and has developed well beyond its initial purpose. The Boucher Road was originally meant to be a place for large scale factory employment and manufacturing based industrial enterprise when it was first developed by the department of commerce 60 years ago (it became the Industrial Development Board) and is now Invest NI. All this happened before the Tories turned the UK economy mostly to a service-based one. Now they must re grow manufacturing post departing Europe having spent 45 years dismantling it. Now Boucher Road has a diverse set of businesses that reflect a service economy- for instance car showrooms like BMW, Volvo, Jaguar. It has Costa, Starbucks, Mc Donald's, KFC. Then the junk shops like BM Bargains and the Range (the latter incorporates an Iceland). I'd guess the businesses here now run into the hundreds and not a factory to be found. Still it's an ill wind....

Marks and Spencers Simply Food is a place I wish I could shop in all the time for my weekly shop…read more But as Peter K keenly observed I'd only ever use it to get my bits and not my main shop! Marks and Spencers can make the modest ready meal into something spectacular. The main time I would go here is when M&S have their famous dine in for £10 offer in which you can get a starter, ingredients for a main, a desert and a bottle of wine. Bargain! The food is of such good quality that you know their making a loss on the offer and just trying to convince the customer to come back again, but I'll stick to this offer but once a moon!