Some shopping centres just have a nice vibe about them and I find this to be the case with…read moreSprucefield. It just feels spacious, clean, bright and pleasant to walk around. Home to some of the big, high-quality, shopping giants including M&S, Next, Mothercare and Pets at Home. However, being an out of town centre, it'll not be easy for everyone to get to, plus it can be EXTREMELY busy, especially at weekends...

Sprucefield shopping centre is a sprawling shopping centre on the outskirts of Belfast. If you are…read moretraveling up to Belfast on the M1 it's a great place to stop and recoup as my parents, sister and I did when we travelled from Dundalk to Belfast last week. The shopping centre has many parking spaces and the centre boasts: Marks & Spencer, JJB, Boots and a rather swish looking McDonald's. The Marks & Spencer is full of lovely things. It has a food hall and a pretty decent sit down restaurant and M&S cafe if you just want something small. The homewares section is vast and is full of lovely things you probably don't need, but look great anyway and there's also a vast clothes section, electrical equipment section, make-up and toiletries and a stationary section. The M&S also has two atms. The Boot's next door is pretty well stocked and carry the trendy Urban Decay and Benefit make-up lines. JJB and Mc'Donalds are also located in the complex. Worth popping into for the Marks & Spencers store.

A good old family department store! In a world of 'cloned' national stores that could be on any…read morehigh street, it's a breath of fresh air. Smyth Pattersons is a department store stocking just about everything you could need for house and home. The shop is spread over several (haphazard!) floors and covers departments such as cookware, furniture, lighting, gardening, electrical, toys and anything else you can imagine. It's a favourite for those with wedding lists. Although it is a large shop it still has a family run feel to it and I have to say that the customer service is the best in any place I've encountered in a long time. The staff are genuinely friendly with good attention to detail.

Be prepared to get lost. Really, this store is huge. It looks fairly small and unassuming from the…read morefront, but it stretches back a fair distance once you get inside. It can get rather busy in the main entrance area on a Saturday, so be prepared for a few elbows digging in. Don't forget to venture to the upstairs floors too. And if you are shopping with family, tell each other which section you are heading to or agree to meet at the entrance by a certain time as it is possible to miss each other (I know from experience!).

People know Next primarily for their fashionable, if a little bit bland, line of clothing. So…read moreimagine my surprise if you will when I stumbled across a Next store with no clothes in it but rather a series of furniture and decorating materials. After coming round, I went in and immediately it confused me. I'm not a major fan of Next in the first place. I always found their clothes to be a tad too big for me and slightly too expensive. Their furniture store did not change my opinion. If anything, it confirmed my original perceptions. The furniture is more expensive than world-famous IKEA. It's all a little bit boring in fact. My girlfriend and I took a walk around just to see what it was like, and to be honest it there was a few nice pieces but nothing stood out and struck me as being particularly interesting. Perhaps it was because I was not in the furniture-buying mode, but I really didn't have any interest in anything there. It was all very general, nice tables, nice chairs, big mirrors, small mirrors, wallpaper etc. All just very bland and boring. With the clothes shop, you always find something you would wear, and if not, you can try on the hats and glasses for a bit of craic. This shop is not particularly exciting. Very run-of-the-mill. Very boring. Very Next.

Gosh, the memories I have of being trailed through this place when I was younger. Yep, right…read morethrough: The household department, with everything from kitchen cutlery to refrigerators (and a particular favourite of my mum's, who at one stage decided everything in our kitchen should be green...even the bin) or... The furniture department, covering every aspect of your furnishing needs, or... The carpet department (where we spent many a boring hour choosing a floor covering. I'm scarred for life) or... The bedding department (the 'rents were on the look-out for Stag furniture) or... The giftware section, with the china and glassware (yet another favourite of my mum's - we have everything from Royal Dalton to Waterford Crystal on display in our house). You can understand why my parents loved it, and my sister and I didn't. It was "boring", to put it in our words. Oh, but wait! I almost forgot... The bright light at the end of a very long, mundane tunnel. That little 'something' which kept us going and gave us an element of hope. The toy section! That's better...

Smith patterson has been our family shop for years even when our parents where alive, they took us…read morealong .. only shop in our city you can visit with so much to offer for your home, great for anyone wanting wedding gifts etc.from furniture ,'bedding , kitchen ,gardens hardware, toys and even jewellery. It wasn't for the lockdown we would also enjoy cup coffee or lunch in their cafe. Staff very helpful and friendly if you need anything, Colin the manager is most helpful and very patient with his customers if you need advise or any questions, Its no problem. Our family have enjoyed our visits to Symith Patterson each time we visit. We look forward to lock down being over so we can see more of this great store and enjoy what's to offer. Thankyou for all your help in past and look forward to more visits soon. great shop lots to see and buy , so next time you're in lisburn visit this great store you won't be disappointed Sid & Eunice

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.

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

With a large pick and mix sweets display near the door as you go in Woodsides reminded me of how…read moreWoolworths used to be when it was in its heyday. Likewise, there are all sorts of things for the home here at good prices though better than the other W was of late. In fact, it took quite a lot of mental effort not to buy anything as I eyed the inexpensive baskets, cheerful bathroom things, kitchen stuff and all sorts of other useful stuff all priced competitively. There are clothes too, not so interesting as the household items and anyway I really felt I had to bet out before I got carried away on impulse buys, I'll save that for later.

I have called in here a few times in the last year. Each time I wonder how much longer it can stay…read moreafloat. It still has a Primark and a Dunnes stores and I guess if they go it's dead. I remember a thriving food hall here with 6 or 7 purveyors when Harry Ramsden's deservedly did a roaring trade and I was a fan. No more, it's down to just one; a BurgerKing that opens at noon. It had M&S food and a cafe but not now. Our world is changing and not for the better. It's a harder world and shopping malls like this one reflect what's hidden in plain sight - increased poverty, cuts after cuts killing people, killing trade, shutting shops, putting folk out of work, who for the most part are the working poor. It's political ideology behind it for the most part - nutters who wanted brexit ironically the richest and the poorest; the former know they will make shed loads more money atop what they already have amassed with no threat to pay fair tax and the latter in the vain hope they'll escape their grinding poverty caused by 15 years of frozen wages, diminished services and the transfer of manufacturing overseas. They have no chance. The working poor will start to realise they were lied to but rising fuel and food will leave them still more desperate every day and there's nothing they can do. Half empty shopping malls will become three quarters empty in the next few months, recession will hit hard as hell. It's not that there's no money about as there more of it than ever it's just that the richest are not passing as many crumbs to the poor as they used to. And politicians don't do real politics any more - they talk and they lie and steal all round them while high streets will become wastelands.

Bow Street Mall...it's a mall (shopping centre to you and I) and it's in Bow Street. Clever, eh? At…read moreleast there's no chance of you forgetting where it's located... In all seriousness, Bow Street Mall is probably one my favourite shopping centres. Here's why... 1) It has sixty shops. Sixty! I reckon that's pretty impressive for a central shopping centre. It's not just the number which is impressive, either. The range of stores, including Primark, Tempest, Dunnes Stores, Dorothy Perkins, TK Maxx and Hanna and Browne, is equally impressive, considering most of these are fairly huge. And it's all under one roof! 2) The food court is consistently busy, and offers the likes of Burger King, KFC, O'Briens, Shanghai Express, Harry Ramsden's and Barnams. Located on the first floor, the food court is the only part of the mall which is not on the ground floor. Yes, I rather like this mall on Bow Street. Innovative name and all...