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Belfast: Travel Details

This is a quick and handy source for details on the sights, hotels, tour guides and restaurants featured in "Belfast and the Best of Northern Ireland" show. For much more (and updates), see this year's edition of Rick Steves' Ireland guidebook.

 
Ulster Museum

While mediocre by European standards, this is Belfast's one major museum. It's free and pretty painless: Ride the elevator to the top floor and follow the spiraling exhibits downhill; there's a cheery café halfway down.

The delicately worded history section is given an interesting British slant (such as the implication that the Great Famine of 1845 was caused by the Irish population doubling in 40 years — without a mention of various English contributions to the suffering). After a wander through the Early Medieval Ireland exhibit and a peek at a pretty good mummy, top things off with the Girona treasure. Soggy bits of gold, silver, leather and wood were salvaged from the Spanish Armada's shipwrecked Girona — lost off the Antrim Coast north of Belfast in 1588 (free, Mon–Fri 10:00–17:00, Sat 13:00–17:00, Sun 14:00–17:00, in Botanic Gardens on Stranhills Road, south of downtown, tel. 028/9038-3048, www.ulstermuseum.org.uk).

Black cab tours

At the intersection of Castle and King Streets, you'll find the Castle Junction Car Park. This multistory parking garage's basement (entrance on King Street) is filled with old black cabs — and the only Irish-language signs in downtown Belfast. These shared black cabs efficiently shuttle residents from outlying neighborhoods up and down the Falls Road and to the city center.

This service originated more than 30 years ago at the beginning of the Troubles, when locals would hijack city buses and use them as barricades in the street fighting. When bus service was discontinued, local paramilitary groups established the shared taxi service. Any cab goes up the Falls Road, past Sinn Fein headquarters and lots of murals, to the Milltown Cemetery (£2, sit in front and talk to the cabbie). Hop in and out. Easy-to-flag-down cabs run every minute or so in each direction on the Falls Road. Twenty trained cabbies do one-hour tours (£22.50/1-3 people, £25/4-6 people, £10 per additional hour, cheap for a small group of up to 6 riders, tel. 028/9031-5777, www.wbta.net).

Ramore Wine Bar

Sharing a building with the Coast Pizza Pasta Bar, the salty, modern and much-loved Ramore Wine Bar is upstairs, bursting with happy eaters. They're enjoying the most inviting menu I've seen in Ireland, featuring huge £7-14 meals ranging from steaks to vegetarian food. Share a decadent Banofee (banana toffee) pie dessert with a friend (daily 12:15–14:15 & 17:00–22:00, tel. 028/7082-4313).

 

Stephen McPhilemy

Stephen McPhilemy leads private tours of his hometown, Belfast and the North Coast — when he's not on the road guiding tours for Rick Steves several months a year (tel. 028/7130-9051, mobile 078-0101-1027, nirelandtours@btinternet.com).

Old Bushmills Distillery

The 45-minute tour starts with the mash pit, which is filled with a porridge that eventually becomes whiskey. (The leftovers of that porridge are fed to the county's particularly happy cows.) You'll see thousands of oak casks — the kind used for Spanish sherry — filled with aging whiskey.

The finale, of course, is the tasting in the 1608 Bar — the former malt barn. When your guide asks for a tasting volunteer, raise your hand quick and strong. Four volunteers per tour get to taste test eight different whiskeys (Irish versus Scotch and bourbon). Everyone else gets a single glass of his or her choice. Non-whiskey enthusiasts might enjoy a cinnamon-and-cloves hot toddy.

To see the distillery at its lively best, visit when the 100 workers are manning the machinery — Monday morning through Friday noon (weekend tours see a still still). Tours are limited to 35 people and book up. In summer, call in your name to get a tour time before you arrive (£5, April–Oct daily, tours are on the half-hour from 9:30, last tour at 16:00, Sun from 12:00; Nov-March daily at 10:30, 11:30, 13:30, 14:30 and 15:30; tel. 028/2073-1521). You can get a decent lunch in the tasting room after your tour. The distillery is signposted a quarter mile from Bushmills town center.

Giant's Causeway

Start your visit in the Visitors Centre — the real information is on the walls of the exhibition, while a video gives a worthwhile history of the Giant's Causeway, with a regional overview (£1, 4/hr, 12 min). A gift shop and cafeteria are standing by. A minibus (70p each way, 4/hr) zips tired tourists a half-mile directly to the Grand Causeway, the highlight of the entire coast.

For a better dose of the Causeway, consider this plan. Follow the high cliff-top trail from the Visitors Centre 10 minutes to a great viewpoint, then five minutes farther to reach the Shepherd's Stairway. Zigzag down to the coast; at the T junction, go 100 yards right to the towering pipes of "the Organ." Then retrace your steps and continue left to the "Giant's Boot" for some photo fun and the dramatic point where the stairs step into the sea. Just beyond that, at the asphalt turnaround, you'll see the bus stop for a lift back to the Visitors Centre. You could walk the entire five-mile Giant's Causeway. The 75p hiking guide points out the highlights named by 18th-century guides (Camel's Back, Giant's Eye and so on). The causeway is free and always open (Visitors Centre open daily 10:00–17:00, July–Aug until 18:00, £5 to park, tel. 028/2073-1855).

A quaint, narrow, gauge-steam locomotive now connects the Causeway to Bushmills on a two-mile, 15-minute journey. Departures from the Bushmills station (on Ballaghmore Road, 15-min walk from distillery) are on the half-hour from 11:30 to 17:30; return trips leave from the Causeway station on the hour, starting from 11:00 to 17:00 (£5 round-trip, £3.50 one-way, runs daily June–Sept, sporadic weekends rest of year, tel. 028/2073-2844 or 028/2073-2594 recorded info, www.giantscausewayrailway.org).

Back to "Belfast and the Best of Northern Ireland" script

Excerpted from Rick Steves' Ireland 2005