Belfast mornings, Causeway afternoons.
Which coach actually leaves you time on the stones. Whether the Dark Hedges is worth the detour home. Who drives the black cabs, and what a mile of city wall costs to walk. Every guided day in Northern Ireland, reviewed.
Causeway coast day, or Belfast city day?
Most visitors get two days here and lose part of the first one deciding. The coast is a nine-hour round trip out of Belfast and back. The city fits in an afternoon and keeps going after it. Here is how each one actually runs.
Out to the columns and back before dinner
Out of Belfast by nine. Carrickfergus keep or the Glens on the way up, the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, an hour or so on the stones, then Dunluce and the Dark Hedges on the run home.
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Cross the whole city centre on foot
Belfast city centre is twenty minutes wide. A morning walking tour covers the City Hall, the Cathedral Quarter and the entries; the shipyard and the slipways fill the afternoon; a black cab takes you west when you want the parts a map will not explain.
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Walk the complete ring of walls
Derry-Londonderry is the one city on this island that still has its full circuit of walls. A mile of rampart, comfortably an hour, the Bogside below on one side and the Guildhall on the other.
See all 16 →By place — where are you based?
Belfast192 tours
Derry-Londonderry16 tours
The Giant’s Causeway73 tours
The Antrim Coast10 tours- The Titanic Quarter10 tours
Across the border5 tours- Every review →
The Titanic, the Causeway, the black cabs — in booking order.
Every review →The tours more visitors take than anything else here, and what each one gets you for the day.
1
Titanic Belfast Entrance Ticket: Titanic Visitor Experience Including SS Nomadic
Titanic Belfast plus SS Nomadic in one ticket, explore at your pace on the Belfast shipyard site, then step aboard the last White Star vessel.
From · $37
Read our review →
2
Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black Taxi Tours
from $100
3
Giant’s Causeway Day Trip from Belfast
from $48
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
Giants Causeway & Castles Tour from Belfast: Guided tour
from $33
7
Belfast black taxi tours
from $55
8
Game of Thrones, Iron Islands & Giant’s Causeway
from $54
Which Causeway day trip gets you time on the stones.
All 73 Causeway tours →
A Causeway day out of Belfast is really four stops: the castle or the Glens on the way up, the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, the columns themselves, then Dunluce and the Dark Hedges on the run home. What separates the tours is how long you get at each one.
Basalt, shipyard, walled city, coast road.
Four hundred years of licensed whiskey, a ship that never came home, forty thousand hexagons and the road that strings them together. The handful of days most Northern Ireland trips are built from.
The Causeway Coastal Route does not do straight lines.
Belfast to Derry-Londonderry the long way: a Norman keep at Carrickfergus, nine glens, a rope bridge slung over twenty metres of Atlantic, and the ruin at Dunluce hanging off the cliff edge. Most of it fits into one long day, and none of it is improved by rushing.
The Falls, the Shankill, and the wall between them.
Belfast’s twentieth century is not kept behind glass here. The two roads are a few hundred metres apart, the wall that separates them is still standing, and several of the gates through it are still closed at night. Guides from both sides walk visitors along it and explain what happened where.
These are history tours. They are quiet, they are led by people who live on these streets, and they are worth the time.
Derry-Londonderry kept its whole wall.
Built between 1613 and 1619 and never taken, the rampart still runs a complete circuit around the old city: about a mile, an easy hour at walking pace, the Bogside on one side and the Guildhall on the other. Walk it first and the rest of the city makes sense afterwards.
- 1Discover the City Walls – Small Group Public or Private Tourfrom $41
- 2Private Guided Tour of Causeway Coastal Routefrom $712
- 3Derrie Danders: Highlights of the Walled City a Self-Guided Audio Tourfrom $14
The black cab, the beech avenue, the 1608 licence.
Castles and coast paths exist all over these islands. A taxi driver from the Falls Road, a film location that is really a farm lane, and the oldest licensed whiskey in the world do not.
The Black Cab Ride
The black taxis began as a shared public service in west Belfast when the bus routes stopped running, and the drivers never gave the route up. The same cabs now take visitors along the Falls and the Shankill and stop at the wall in between. The driver is the tour: most of them grew up on one side of it, and they will tell you which.
- 1Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black Taxi Tours★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,633 reviews
- 2Private Black Taxi Belfast City Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,188 reviews
- 3Belfast black taxi tours★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,166 reviews
The Dark Hedges
The beeches on the Bregagh Road were planted in the eighteenth century to give arriving guests something to look at on the way up to a Georgian house. Two centuries later a film crew drove a cart under them and the lane became the Kingsroad. Storms have taken several of the trees since; the avenue is shorter every decade, and it still costs nothing to walk.
- 1Game of Thrones and Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Tour from Belfast★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,291 reviews
- 2Game of Thrones, Iron Islands & Giant’s Causeway★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 923 reviews
- 3Giants Causeway, Rope Bridge, Carrickfergus Castle and Dark Hedges Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 596 reviews
Bushmills, and the New Distillers
Bushmills works under a licence to distil granted in 1608, which makes it the oldest licensed whiskey distillery anywhere. Belfast has since answered back: McConnell’s is making spirit in the city again, and Titanic Distillers operates out of the pump-house 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
A Belfast walking tour, or the coast road in a private car.
Every tour on the site, by what it actually costs. The cheap end of Northern Ireland is unusually good.
Walking tours, self-guided audio, distillery tastings and museum entry. Most of Belfast lives down here.
The full coach day to the Causeway, the Game of Thrones runs, the guided city tours and the cab rides.
Private cars and drivers: the coast road at your own pace, picked up at the hotel door, home when you say so.
Atlantic rain is no reason to lose the day in Belfast.
Belfast gets measurable rain on around a hundred and fifty days a year and nobody here reschedules for it. The useful part is that the best indoor hours sit inside the same square mile: the Titanic galleries and the slipway outside them, a distillery tasting, a museum, and an audio tour you can pause under an awning.
Belfast to Derry-Londonderry, the long way round.
Bushmills
Dunluce & the Dark HedgesNewest reviews from Belfast and the coast.
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Experience the Antrim Coast and the Land of Giants – Private Tour
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Game of Thrones scene location inc Giants causeway from Belfast
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Giants Causeway Tour From Belfast including Game of thrones sites
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Derrie Danders: A Self-Guided Audio Tour of the Riverside and South City
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Derrie Danders: Wander around the Waterside on a self-guided GPS audio tour
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Shore Excursion: Giants Causeway and Belfast City Tour
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Private Giants Causeway Tour Tour For Up to 15 People
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Full Day Private Luxury Tour of Causeway Coast (Giants Causeway)
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Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black taxi tours private 2hrs adventure
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