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2-Day Northern Ireland Tour from Dublin Including Belfast and Giants Causeway
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From €199 per person
Northern Ireland is well worth making time for on any visit to Ireland. This 2-day tour from Dublin gives you a proper look at the North - its history, landscapes, and the communities that call it home.
You’ll visit the Titanic Experience Visitor Center in Belfast, which tells the story of the ship’s construction in the city’s shipyards. Your guide introduces you to the character of both the Ulster-Irish and Ulster-British communities, giving you real context for a place that spent 30 years in the headlines and is now very much finding its feet again.
Downtown Belfast is well worth an evening to explore on your own, and the glorious Glens of Antrim the following day are something else entirely - Scotland is visible just 12 miles across the water. The tour also includes a stop at the iconic Dark Hedges and Ballintoy Harbour, both familiar to fans of Game of Thrones.
The optional Black Taxi Tour is worth the £90 if you’re interested in the Troubles. The good drivers are ex-combatants from both sides of the peace walls - the Falls and the Shankill run parallel for a mile, and a series of walls built in 1969 still divide them. A driver who actually lived it is a different experience from a walking tour. Read the reviews of individual drivers before you book.
Your free evening in Belfast is the tour’s hidden asset. The Titanic Quarter waterfront walk is flat, free, and gives you context for the museum you just visited - the Samson and Goliath cranes still stand over the slipway where the Titanic was launched on 31 May 1911. After that, the Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street is a Victorian gin palace owned by the National Trust and run as a working pub - original tilework, gas-lit snugs, across the road from the Europa Hotel. Kelly’s Cellars on Bank Street has been open since 1720. White’s Tavern on Winecellar Entry holds Belfast’s oldest tavern licence, from 1630.
For food on your free evening, St George’s Market on May Street is open Friday 8am-2pm and Saturday 9am-3pm - soda farls, smoked fish, a dozen breakfast bap stalls, and live music on Sundays. If the market isn’t running, Mourne Seafood Bar on Bank Street uses their own oyster beds in Carlingford. For a quick lunch, the Saturday food market is five minutes’ walk from the Titanic Belfast and costs a fraction of what the in-museum café charges.
The Dark Hedges photograph is best before 9am. The Dark Hedges - the beech tree tunnel on Bregagh Road near Armoy - are one of the most photographed spots in Northern Ireland and were used as the Kingsroad in Game of Thrones. The tour will stop here, but at peak hours it’s crowded. If there’s any flexibility in the morning start, early is the word. Bushmills is a short drive from the Dark Hedges area and right next to the Giant’s Causeway; if you get a moment in the village, the Old Bushmills Distillery has the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distilling operation (licence 1608) and the narrow-gauge heritage railway runs two miles from the village to the Causeway itself.
Ballintoy Harbour is a Game of Thrones location too - if the guide stops there, don’t rush. It was used as the Iron Islands harbour in the series. It’s a small working harbour with a steep approach road; the actual harbour wall is worth a few minutes and the Glens of Antrim coastline behind it is as good as anything on the route. Coming from that stretch, Cushendun is further down the coast - the red sandstone caves at the south end of the beach were the Stormlands set in Season 2, and the whitewashed village around them was designed by Clough Williams-Ellis, who later built Portmeirion in Wales.