It was more like a graveyard than a city. The streets were deserted, the shops shut, the bars and restaurants empty. There wasn't a car, bus or lorry on the roads. The Orange Order had brought Belfast to a standstill.
There wasn't a lot to do in the city centre from lunchtime yesterday. Nowhere was open. You couldn't buy clothes. You couldn't pay your electricity or telephone bill. You couldn't buy a stamp or lodge a cheque. You couldn't have a pint or lay a bet.
A wedding party leaving the registry office at City Hall posed quickly for photographs before departing.
On the stroke of 4 p.m., loyalists took to the streets. They blocked almost all arterial roads. The protests were largely made up of women and children. Nationalists complained that the RUC took no action.
The exodus from the city centre started at 2.45 p.m. All the big stores closed. Banks and post offices shut.
Travel agencies, second-hand book stores, sandwich bars and trendy ethnic shops also closed. It wasn't that they all supported the protest - they just didn't have the choice of staying open. With the roads about to be blocked, staff had to get home and there would be no customers anyway.
"This is a nightmare," said Ms Maria Tierney, who was about to fly to Turkey. "There was so much I needed to get in town today, all those last-minute things - suncream, sandals, toiletries and some bits and pieces for the kids. I'll have to go without them."
"I thought days like this were behind us," said Mr Peter Wilson. "What does this do for Northern Ireland's image abroad?"
However, Mr Neil Ludlow thought deserted streets were a small price to pay. "How could people worry about shopping when the future of Ulster is at stake?"
Belfast's golden mile, home to dozens of chic, new bistros and bars, was deserted.
Most roads were blocked by about 50 loyalists, many of whom were women and children. A group of mothers sat in the middle of Shaftesbury Square. At Donegall Pass, one protester was dressed as Yogi Bear. RUC officers chatted to loyalists.
"You have one of the most amazing police forces in the world," said Ms Mary Austin, a visitor from New York. "The NYPD would never allow a handful of people to block roads like that, they would all be arrested. We had heard the RUC were quite tough but obviously that's just propaganda."
Nationalists in the Lower Ormeau, who were hemmed in between two loyalist roadblocks, didn't see it that way. A man outside the Hatfield Bar said: "The RUC have beaten us off these streets countless times but they are just standing by and letting the loyalists block roads and close the city.
"They haven't so much as raised a baton to them on this road. If we were behaving like that, they would be firing plastic bullets."
Pointing to the protesters blocking Ormeau Bridge, Mr Gerard Rice said: "How many of them are the RUC arresting for obstruction?"
A woman in the Lower Ormeau complained the chemist shop was closed and she couldn't get a prescription changed for her son. But the loyalist protesters on the other side were unperturbed.
"Oh, the poor wee people of the Lower Ormeau are stuck in their houses again and their shops are shut," said one man in mock sympathy.
"They don't need many shops anyway," said his friend. "All they buy is booze and fags."