May 3

May 3 2-Day Tour to Belfast & Giant's Causeway | Traveling in Northern Ireland

In a spur-of-the-moment decision, I tagged along on a tour to Belfast and Giant's Causeway. My friend found a two-day trip through Paddywagon Tours. They had one-day trip options as well. It felt a bit rushed at times, but overall I'd recommend them!

Day 1: Titanic Quarter & Belfast City Center

The first leg was from Dublin to Belfast; on the way there, we stopped at the Titanic Museum, the pride of Belfast.

Ironically, the museum itself is shaped like an iceberg. It gave an overview the history of construction, the tragedy, and the pop culture. A few things I recall:

It took three years to build the "unsinkable" ship.
Many men employed to build parts of the ship went deaf due to hammering day in and day out.
For several weeks following the iceberg collision, no one knew exactly what happened when the ship sank; journalists had to fill in the pieces, romanticizing and exaggerating what they didn't know (I guess alternative facts was a thing back then, too).
There have been many film iterations of what happened when the ship sank, portraying the key players either as heroes, villains, or cowards.
Jack Dawson was a character that James Cameron invented for the 1997 film, but it was discovered later on that there was a J. (Joseph) Dawson who was a trained carpenter and coal tender (I think?)

From there, we headed up to Belfast and I walked around and explored a bit. I personally felt like it was a passable city center, then again, we were only allocated an hour or so to explore. Other than Belfast City Hall (below), there wasn't much to do except shop, eat, and go to pubs and clubs which we did later that night. We ended up at The Crown Liquor Saloon, one of the oldest pubs in the city (I don't have pictures because it was so dark in there).

Fast-forward to...

Day 2: Carrick-a-Redge Rope Bridge & Giant's Causeway

After a real quick lunch, we headed to Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage site made up of 40,000 natural basalt columns formed from an ancient volcanic eruption.