Recommended itinerary from our visit to Northern Ireland in July 2018

 In order to follow the recommended itinerary below, you need a car. You can hire one at the airport and drive directly to Port Rush

We did overnight stops at Airbnb’s in Port Rush and Ballycastle and 2 nights in Belfast. A great Airbnb find in Belfast was a penthouse in Edwards’s Court, St Anne’s Square located in the Cathedral Quarter. It was modern, bright and spacious with great views of the cathedral. It was next door to    the Metropolitan Art Centre and walking distance from many lovely pubs   and restaurants. I would stay certainly there again.

Eat at the Nelson & Prawn in Port Rush for its amazing spicy food and good and reasonably priced wine list. Also, great place for people watching, nice décor and views! Loved it.

Great food at The Grill at 38-45 Hill Street in Belfast

The Duke of York 7-11 Commercial Street in Belfast had great Guinness and interesting murals of famous Northern Irish characters in its yard.

https://www.alexmaddoxphotography.co.uk/uk-northern-ireland

Day 1

  • Dunluce castle
  • Giants Causeway
  • Dunseverick harbour (as there is not much of Dunseverick castle left to see)
  • Portbradden – found at the west end of Whitepark bay
  • Ballintoy harbour – another film location from The Game of Thrones. Look out for a picturesque church on the way down to the harbour.
  • Carrick a Rede rope bridge (we skipped this as the queue was too long)
  • Stay at Ballycastle and visit Rathlin Island if you have time. You may need an extra night for that.

Day 2

  • Dark Hedges as featured in The Game of Thrones. It was a highlight of the day and really worth a visit. It is not signposted so use the sat nav postcode to find it. Get there early before some inconsiderate visitors start parking under the trees and ruin the view. At one point I asked a new arrival to move their car. We were nearly knocked out by a novice drone camera user.
  • Cushendun – we stopped here for a tasty breakfast
  • Cushendall 
  • Glengarriffe Waterfall – we didn’t have time to do the full walk so we saved on parking and visited via a restaurant near a waterfall, called Laragh Lodge 120 Glen Road BT44 0RG
  • Carnlough
  • We had hoped to visit Glenarm castle and walled garden but ran out of time

Day 3-4

  • Explore the Belfast street art; in particular murals around Hill Street.
  • I also strongly recommend doing Belfast black cab murals and Politics Tour. Great street art and narrative about Belfast’s history.
  • Belfast war museum (Talbot Street)
  • And finally – weather permitting, do an open top bus tour for fantastic views of the city.