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3-Day Northern Ireland Tour from Dublin: Giant's Causeway & Titanic Experience
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From €399 per person
This three-day tour takes you through the north of Ireland - crossing between the Republic and Northern Ireland - exploring a part of the island that has truly come into its own since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Today visitors come from all over the world to walk dramatic landscapes that doubled as Game of Thrones and Star Wars filming locations, to wander historic cities, and to sit in great pubs sampling local beers, whiskies, and food.
Paddywagon Tours has genuine friendships in both the Ulster-Irish and Ulster-British communities, and they’re delighted to introduce you to both sides of that story.
Over the three days you’ll take in Belfast city, the iconic Dark Hedges (Game of Thrones), the UNESCO-listed Giant’s Causeway, a guided walking tour of Derry/Londonderry, the coastal village of Strandhill, and atmospheric Galway city. If you’d like a Political Black Taxi tour in Belfast, that’s optional - it’s organised and paid directly to the driver/guide on the day.
Meeting point: Pick-up at 5 Beresford Pl, Mountjoy, Dublin 1, D01 V2V4, Ireland
In Belfast - the Titanic Belfast visitor centre is included, and it tells the story well, but Belfast has a second life after the official sights. The Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street is a Victorian gin palace owned by the National Trust and run as a real pub - get a snug if you can. If you opt for the Political Black Taxi tour, ask the operator which guide you’re getting; the drivers who actually lived through the Troubles on their own street are a different experience from those who learned the script later.
In Derry - the guided walking tour included in the price covers the walls, but don’t skip what’s below them. From the Royal Bastion stretch you look straight down into the Bogside - walk down through Butcher’s Gate afterwards and follow Rossville Street to the People’s Gallery murals. The twelve large paintings by the Bogside Artists (painted between 1994 and 2008) and Free Derry Corner at the south end tell the story of what happened here in January 1972 more honestly than anything in a brochure. The Museum of Free Derry on Glenfada Park is run by relatives of the dead, and it’s worth the extra hour. Derry is the only completely walled city in Ireland, and the full circuit of those walls takes twenty-five minutes.
At Strandhill - if you get a free hour in Strandhill, don’t try to swim. It’s not a swimming beach - the same break that draws the surfers is the reason the lifeguards red-flag it most days. The Strand Bar on the seafront is the Byrne family’s pub (the same family runs Mammy Johnston’s ice cream parlour next door, three generations of it since the 1930s). A bowl of chowder and a look at Knocknarea - the mountain behind the village with the Neolithic cairn on the summit that tradition says covers Queen Medb of Connacht - is the honest version of the stop.
Galway - if the tour ends in Galway, the medieval core around Shop Street and Quay Street is walkable in thirty minutes. Tigh Coili on Dominick Street runs a serious trad session from 9:30pm most nights. For food, Ard Bia at Nimmo on Quay Street or An Púcán (the Irish-language dining room) are the options worth booking ahead rather than wandering into.