BELFAST · THE CAUSEWAY COAST
Where giants built the coast.
From the basalt steps of the Giant's Causeway to Belfast's black cabs and peace-wall murals, the Game of Thrones filming sites and the castles strung along the Antrim coast. Here's how to see the best of it.
Only in Northern Ireland
Three days you can only have here.
Plenty of places have a capital, a coastline and a castle or two. Only Northern Ireland has a peace wall explained from the front seat of a black cab, a shore the legends say a giant built, and a whole television kingdom filmed in its forests and harbours.
From the front seat
Belfast’s Black Cab Tours
There is no neutral way to drive the Falls and the Shankill. The cab drivers grew up on these streets through the Troubles, and they take you to the gable-end murals and the peace wall and tell you what happened from the people who were there. You can read about it anywhere. You can only hear it like this in Belfast.
- 1 Cab Tours Belfast Famous Black Taxi Tours
- 2 Private Black Taxi Belfast City Tour
- 3 Belfast black taxi tours
On the coast
The Giant’s Causeway
Forty thousand basalt columns step down into the Atlantic in near-perfect hexagons, packed so tight they look laid by hand. The science is a sixty-million-year-old lava flow; the legend is the giant Finn McCool building a road to Scotland. Either way, there is one in the world and it is on this coast.
- 1 Game of Thrones and Giant’s Causeway Full-Day Tour from Belfast
- 2 Giants Causeway & Castles Tour from Belfast: Guided tour
- 3 From Belfast: Game of Thrones, Iron Islands & Giant’s Causeway
Across the North
Walking Into Westeros
The Kingsroad is a real avenue of beech trees called the Dark Hedges. The Iron Islands are Ballintoy Harbour. Winterfell is Castle Ward. Northern Ireland was the main backlot for the whole series, and the locations sit close enough together to see several in a single day.
- 1 From Belfast: Game of Thrones Winterfell Locations Trek
- 2 Giant’s Causeway Tour including Game of Thrones Sites from Belfast
- 3 Game of Thrones Studio Tour Admission Ticket
Where most people start
If you do one thing in Belfast.
The most popular experience in Northern Ireland right now, and a strong first day before you head north for the coast.
The classics
Northern Ireland's Most Popular Tours
Black cab tours, the Giant's Causeway, Game of Thrones country and the Antrim coast. The trips that fill up first.
The great coastal drive
The Causeway Coastal Route.
One of the world's great coastal drives runs north from Belfast along the Antrim coast: the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge swinging over the sea, the beech-tree tunnel of the Dark Hedges, the clifftop ruin of Dunluce Castle, the old whiskey town of Bushmills, and the Giant's Causeway waiting at the end of it. Most day tours from Belfast string the best of it together so you never have to touch the wheel.
See 67 Causeway Coast tours →Where to begin
Pick what brought you north.
Belfast for the murals and the black cabs. The Causeway for the coast. Westeros for the filming sites. The Titanic Quarter for the ship that started it all.
By tour type
Or pick how you want to see it.
A black cab if you want the Troubles told first-hand. A coach if you want the whole coast in a day. On foot if you want Belfast up close. Plus Game of Thrones runs, hop-on buses and the city by night.
The gable ends
The murals, up close.
Hundreds of murals cover Belfast's gable walls, and every one is an argument. If you want the political story slowly and on your own two feet rather than from a cab, these are the three we'd pick.
On foot
Belfast on foot.
Walking tours reach the entries of the old town, the Cathedral Quarter and the political heart of the city that cabs and coaches roll straight past. Three we'd lace up for first.
Whiskey country
A taste of the North.
Bushmills has been distilling on the Antrim coast since 1608, Titanic Distillers now run the old pump-house in the shipyard, and Belfast's food scene has caught up with both. Three tastings and tours we'd build an afternoon around.
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