Northern Ireland, booked properly.
Which Causeway coach still leaves time on the stones. What the Titanic ticket actually includes. Which taxi driver grew up on the road he is showing you. Every tour in Northern Ireland, reviewed.
What Northern Ireland is actually famous for.
The stones, the shipyard, the filming locations and the distilleries. Six days that most first visits are built around, and the best way to book each one.
Giant’s Causeway: choose the coach that leaves you time on the stones.
All Causeway day trips →
Forty thousand basalt columns, two hours from Belfast, and every operator runs a different loop around them. These three carry the most travellers; the full list splits the rest by how much coastline you want on the way.
Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede and the Dark Hedges
North through Ballycastle, the rope bridge over the chasm at Carrick-a-Rede, then the beech tunnel at Bregagh Road on the way home.
Dunluce, Carrickfergus and the stones
Dunluce sits on a stack with the kitchen that fell into the sea, Carrickfergus has held the shoreline since 1177, and the Causeway closes the day.
Causeway and back to the cruise terminal
Straight up the Antrim coast road, an hour and a half on the columns, and back down to the terminal with the sailing time built into the plan.
Westeros was shot within an hour of Belfast.
Ballintoy harbour played the Iron Islands, Castle Ward played Winterfell, and the beeches at Bregagh Road played the Kingsroad until the storms took two of them. The studio tour at Banbridge holds the sets and the costumes.
The Northern Ireland tours travellers actually take.
Every review →The bookings that carry more travellers than anything else on this coast, and what makes each one worth its day.
1
Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Guided Trip
Review of the Belfast to Giant’s Causeway day trip, with castles, Dark Hedges, Bushmills, lunch, costs, timing, and practical tips.
From · $47
Read our review →
2
Titanic Belfast Entrance Ticket: Titanic Visitor Experience Including SS Nomadic
from $37
3
Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black Taxi Tours
from $100
4
Game of Thrones and Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Tour from Belfast
from $48
5
Private Black Taxi Belfast City Tour
from $110
6
City Sightseeing Belfast Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $13
7
Giants Causeway & Castles Tour from Belfast: Guided tour
from $33
8
Belfast black taxi tours
from $55
Belfast to the Causeway, priced end to end.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it actually costs. A full day on the Antrim coast starts at less than dinner in Belfast.
Walking tours, entry tickets and the coach runs to the Causeway that fill up first.
Guided coast days, taxi tours, tastings and the small-group filming location trips.
- 1Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black Taxi Toursfrom $100
- 2Private Black Taxi Belfast City Tourfrom $110
- 3Belfast black taxi toursfrom $55
Private drivers, chartered coast days and the tours built around one car and one family.
Belfast built her, and never quite stopped talking about it.
The Titanic slipways are still there, marked out at full length in the concrete, with the Harland and Wolff cranes behind them. The museum sits on the old drawing offices; the SS Nomadic, her tender, floats in the dock next door.
Three things you cannot do anywhere else.
Castles and coastline turn up all over these islands. A volcanic pavement you can walk on, a shipyard that still frames its own ghost, and a licence granted in 1608 belong to this coast alone.
The Stones Themselves
A lava flow cooled slowly enough to crack into columns, and forty thousand of them step down into the Atlantic in near-perfect hexagons. You walk on them. There is no railing, no glass and no queue system out on the pavement, which is why the operators who allow ninety minutes rather than forty are worth the extra hour on the coach.
- 1Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Guided Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,361 reviews
- 2Game of Thrones and Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Tour from Belfast★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,291 reviews
- 3Giants Causeway & Castles Tour from Belfast: Guided tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,432 reviews
The Ship Belfast Built
Titanic and her sister Olympic were laid down side by side on the Queen’s Island slipways, and both outlines are marked out at full size in the ground outside the museum. Stand at the stern end and the scale lands harder than any exhibit. The SS Nomadic, the last White Star vessel afloat, sits in the Hamilton Dock a two-minute walk away.
- 1Titanic Belfast Entrance Ticket: Titanic Visitor Experience Including SS Nomadic★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,698 reviews
- 2Giant’s Causeway and more including Titanic Experience Ticket Tour from Belfast★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 165 reviews
- 3Giant’s Causeway and Titanic Experience from Belfast Port★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 119 reviews
Irish Whiskey’s Home Ground
The Bushmills licence is the oldest granted to any distillery, and the town sits close enough to the Causeway that half the coast tours stop there. Belfast has its own revival: McConnell’s came back after seventy years, and Titanic Distillers works out of the pumphouse of the dry dock where the ship was fitted out.
- 1McConnell’s Distillery Experience with Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 278 reviews
- 2Titanic Museum and Whiskey Distillery Exploration with Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 25 reviews
- 3Explore & Taste: Distillery Tour at Titanic Distillers★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 25 reviews
Book these before you land at Aldergrove.
Most of Northern Ireland can be arranged over breakfast in Belfast. These cannot. They run on timed entry, tide tables and a car park at the end of a single-track road.
- 01Titanic Belfast Entrance Ticket: Titanic Visitor Experience Including SS NomadicTimed entry, and the mid-morning slots go first in summer.
- 02Game of Thrones Studio Tour Admission TicketThe studio tour sells fixed sessions at Banbridge, and it is thirty minutes out of the city with no walk-up queue worth joining.
- 03Giants Causeway, Rope Bridge, Carrickfergus Castle and Dark Hedges TourThe rope bridge runs a timed-ticket system and closes in high wind, so the coast tours that include it book their slots weeks ahead.
- 04McConnell’s Distillery Experience with TastingDistillery tours run small groups on a fixed timetable, and the Causeway coast tours that add one take the last places.
Atlantic weather is a fact here, not a risk.
The coast gets rain on roughly two days in three, and it arrives sideways off the sea. Nothing on this list minds: a warehouse museum on the slipways, a distillery still room, a taxi with the heater on, a pub with a fire and a fiddle. Book the coast for the bright morning and keep these for the afternoon.
By subject — where the tours actually go
The stones and the coast road78 tours
Titanic Quarter13 tours
Filming locations30 tours
Belfast city centre20 tours
Distilleries6 tours
Belfast cruise port8 tours- Every tour on the site →
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