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Private Two-Day Tour: Belfast - Giants Causeway
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From €999 per person
Northern Ireland packs some of the most dramatic landscapes and powerful stories on the island into a remarkably compact area. This private two-day tour from Dublin covers the highlights at a relaxed pace, giving you time to properly absorb each stop rather than rushing through a checklist.
Day one takes you north through County Louth, pausing at Monasterboice where the 10th-century high crosses are among the finest in Ireland. Then it’s on to Belfast, where the Titanic Belfast museum tells the story of the ship and the city that built it with extraordinary detail. The rest of the afternoon is yours to explore the murals, markets and music venues that make Belfast one of the most interesting cities on these islands.
Day two is all about the coast. The Causeway Coastal Route is regularly ranked among the world’s great drives, and your driver-guide knows every viewpoint and photo stop along the way. The Giant’s Causeway itself is as extraordinary as everyone says - 40,000 basalt columns formed by ancient volcanic activity that look like they were laid by hand. Dunluce Castle, perched on a cliff edge above crashing waves, and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge complete a day of genuinely spectacular scenery.
At Monasterboice, give yourself 30 minutes rather than the quick stop most people take. The high crosses - Muiredach’s Cross in particular - are among the finest examples of 10th-century Irish stone carving on the island. The panels on Muiredach’s Cross read like a stone Bible: each face carved with scenes from scripture, Old and New Testament, still legible after a thousand years of weather. The round tower standing behind them is 28 metres and intact. It’s a modest site physically but the quality of what’s there is not modest at all. Worth arriving knowing what you’re looking at.
Book your Belfast accommodation close to the Cathedral Quarter. The Titanic Quarter is magnificent to visit but it’s a fifteen-minute walk from where you’ll want to eat and drink in the evening. The Cathedral Quarter - bars, restaurants and live music within a compact grid of 19th-century streets - is the better base. Harland & Wolff’s yellow Samson and Goliath cranes are visible from most of it anyway.
In Belfast, give yourself a proper afternoon on day one rather than rushing to check in. The Titanic Belfast museum is genuinely a half-day on its own. If the museum runs long and the murals on the Falls and Shankill Roads interest you, ask your driver-guide to work in a black taxi tour detour - the guides who lived through the Troubles tell it in a way no museum can.
For dinner in Belfast, the choice between pubs and restaurants depends on what the evening calls for. The Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street - owned by the National Trust and run as a working pub - is the elegant pint option. If you want a serious meal, OX on Oxford Street (one Michelin star, tasting menu around £90) needs to be booked weeks ahead. The Mourne Seafood Bar on Bank Street is the easier landing - their own oyster beds in Carlingford, a chowder downstairs and a proper menu upstairs, and you can usually get in on the night.
On day two, arrive at the Giant’s Causeway before the coaches. The site gets busy from late morning. If your driver-guide can manage a 9am arrival, you’ll have the basalt columns nearly to yourself for the best part of an hour. The Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge can be booked in advance and is worth it - the walk along the cliff path before you reach the bridge is some of the finest coastal scenery on the island.
Bushmills is three kilometres from the Giant’s Causeway and earns the detour. The Old Bushmills Distillery licence dates to 1608 and tours run all day - book ahead in summer as it sells out by mid-morning in July. Dunluce Castle, which you pass on the Causeway Coastal Route, sits on a basalt stack five minutes west of Bushmills: archaeologists found the lost town of Dunluce beside it in 2011, a 1608 planned settlement with a grid street plan and indoor toilets abandoned after the Battle of the Boyne. The Bushmills Inn’s peat fire and gas-lit bar is the obvious place to eat after the castle - two AA Rosettes and two minutes from the distillery.
Heading for Ballycastle and Carrick-a-Rede. Carrick-a-Rede is on the coast road east of Bushmills toward Ballycastle. If time allows after the rope bridge, Ballycastle has Fair Head - a 4 to 5km clifftop loop with drops of 100 metres straight to the sea, views of Rathlin Island and across to the Mull of Kintyre, and the House of McDonnell on Castle Street with a trad session on a Friday night in an interior unchanged since the 1860s.
On the day 1 stop at Monasterboice, Drogheda is eight kilometres south. If your driver-guide crosses the Boyne going north, the town below is the largest in Louth - a walled medieval port where St Laurence’s Gate is the best-preserved medieval town gate left in Ireland. Monasterboice itself is the reason to stop; but if you have 20 minutes in Drogheda, Ariosa Coffee on the main street is where the town gets its flat whites, and St Peter’s on West Street has the enshrined head of Oliver Plunkett in a glass case.