Day 6: Belfast, Northern Ireland

For this port, we used McCombs coaches for a tour of the Giant's Causeway and Belfast.

http://www.mccombscoaches.com/tours/cruise-ship-shore-excursions

If you follow the link, you will see that they offer 3 tours: one that includes a visit to the Titanic museum at 8am, another that starts at the city hall at 10:45am, and a third that picks you up at the cruise ship at 10:30am. These three tours actually use the same bus. It drops off people at the Titanic Museum, goes to the port and then to city hall to pick up more passengers, and then picks up the people at the Titanic museum on the way to Giant's Causeway. As we have been waking up early the past few days and we're not really Titanic fans, we opted for the tour that picks up at the port at 10:30am for a price of £25/person. By the way, Princess offers the same tour for more money. We got off the ship at 10:15am and the bus was waiting promptly outside the ship. We were then greeted by our coach driver Patrick who was an absolutely terrific driver and tour guide.

We then stopped at city hall to pick up additional passengers and was really convenient as it allowed us to get some cash at an ATM near where the buses stop.

Here's city hall and the Titanic museum:

We finally departed the Titanic museum around 12pm on our way to Giant's Causeway. During the drive, Patrick gave an excellent commentary on the recent history of Northern Ireland and the Troubles. It was a moving narrative and at the end he gave a funny anecdote about how you can tell if a Northern Irishman is a Unionist or a Nationalist. You'd have to take the tour with Patrick to hear this anecdote.

The tour description says it stops at Carrick-a-Rede Ropebridge. It doesn't actually stop where you can walk on the bridge. Because of time constraints, we only stopped at some vantage point where we can take photos of the bridge. The line for the bridge was really long and it would not be possible to stop there because we have to be back on the ship by 6pm.

Our Tour Bus

We finally arrived at Giant's Causeway around 1:30pm. When we got there, our driver warned us that it looks really busy based on the number of cars and buses on the parking lot. And it was really busy. We took the shuttle down to the stones which cost £1/person one way. We spent maybe about 20 minutes taking pictures there and decided to take the shuttle back up. The line for the return shuttle was really long. We waited at least 30 minutes to finally board a shuttle. What was funny was some people on the arriving shuttle must have realized this and tried not to get off. The driver however forced them to get off the shuttle so that didn't work. We finally made it back to the visitor's center around 3pm and bought some snacks and sandwiches because at this point we haven't had lunch yet.

We finally arrived back at Belfast around 4pm for a short tour of the city including the neighborhoods where the Troubles occurred. As we had a little bit of extra time left, Patrick decided to stop at the Peace walls for some photographs and allowed us to write some messages on the wall.

Around 5pm, Patrick decided to head back to the ship. It was probably a good idea since there was a car accident on the way back and traffic was real bad. As we got closer to the ship, Patrick announced "Let me tell you what's happening in Belfast tonight...". He was joking of course and we made it back to the ship with about 20 minutes to spare.

All in all, this port was probably the most bang we got for our buck. For £25/person with a great driver and tour guide, we got to see several interesting places in a limited amount of time.