The Belfast Edit
The city that built the ship, and the coast that outranks the Cliffs of Moher. Eight chapters, each of them walked, driven or eaten before it was published.
The Quick Answer
Belfast deserves two nights, not a day trip from Dublin. The Titanic Quarter takes half a day, a black cab tour of the murals takes two hours, and dinner on the Ormeau Road shows you a city eating very well. It is also the smart base for the Causeway Coast: the Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede and the Dark Hedges all sit within 90 minutes. The Enterprise train from Dublin takes two hours.
Related:the Causeway Coast Editthe Dublin Editthe Northern Ireland Edit
A Note From The Editors
For our first two years living here we did what every American guidebook does with Belfast, which is give it a half day on the way to somewhere else. Then we spent a week and understood that we had been treating the most interesting city on the island as a rest stop.
Belfast is a working city that spent thirty years being described in headlines and has spent the last twenty rebuilding itself in public. That combination produces something unusual: a place that is genuinely candid about its own history. A black taxi driver will take you along the Falls and the Shankill, tell you which side of it he grew up on, and then tell you the other side of it too. Nowhere else in Ireland offers that.
It is also, practically speaking, the best value luxury in the country. A five star room in Belfast costs what a good four star costs in Dublin, the restaurants are punching well above their reputation, and an hour north the Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Coast Road do everything the Wild Atlantic Way does with a fraction of the traffic.
Start Here
Sleep, understand, drive, bring, time. Answer them in this order and Belfast stops being a stop on the way north and starts being the reason you went.
Weekly Refresh · Wk 42Belfast is twenty minutes across on foot, so nowhere is far. What changes is what happens when you walk out the door at seven. The Cathedral Quarter puts you in it. Holywood, ten minutes out, gives you twelve acres and a view of it.
The shortlist
Some of what happened here is not written on the buildings. A ninety minute black taxi tour along the Falls and the Shankill is the single most valuable thing an American visitor can do in Belfast, and it should be on the first afternoon, not the last.
The Giant's Causeway takes forty minutes. The Antrim Coast Road takes three hours and is the actual trip. Go up the coast, come back on the M2, and take the stones after four when the coaches have gone.
Unusually well, and nobody plans it that way. Titanic Belfast and the W5 science centre are four minutes apart in the same quarter, the Ulster Museum is free, and the Causeway is the best climbing frame in Europe.
June, for daylight until nearly ten and the Causeway workable after dinner. September for value. Know about the Twelfth of July before you book it rather than after.
And by place
The Collections
Each collection stands alone. Read them in order if you are planning from scratch, or go straight to the one you need.
“A city explaining itself through one object.”
Collection · The Ship
Which hour to book, how long it really takes, the SS Nomadic that half of visitors skip, and the free slipway out the back that finishes the story.
“The stones take forty minutes. The road is the trip.”
Collection · The Coast
Drive or tour, the Antrim Coast Road versus the motorway, Carrick-a-Rede, Dunluce, Bushmills, and the late afternoon hour that changes the whole day.
“Here a tour is not a shortcut. It is the point.”
Collection · The Guides
The black taxi political tour first. Then the Titanic Quarter walk, Bushmills, Crumlin Road Gaol and the food walks. Honest notes on each, including what to skip.
“Two world class attractions, one short walk.”
Collection · The Family
Titanic Belfast and W5 four minutes apart, the free Ulster Museum, the rope bridge, and the hotels with the space that solves the six o'clock problem.
“Belfast prices well below Dublin for the same quality.”
Collection · The Bed
The Merchant, the Culloden, Grand Central, the Titanic Hotel and the Fitzwilliam, plus the two coast hotels that turn a Causeway day trip into a Causeway trip.
“A Michelin conversation, fifteen years in.”
Collection · The Table
OX, the Muddlers Club, Deanes EIPIC and the Great Room. The Crown, the Duke of York and Kelly's Cellars. St George's Market and the Belfast bap.
The Belfast Week
Reported from Belfast
The Merchant, the Culloden, the Titanic Hotel and Grand Central are effectively the top tier, and on the coast it is the Bushmills Inn and Ballygally. For June to August, book by February.
Where to stayIn June there is usable light until nearly ten at 54 degrees north. Take the stones at six, eat at Bushmills at eight, and drive back down the Coast Road the next morning with the sun on the other side.
The Causeway dayWe resisted recommending it for two years because touring a conflict felt wrong. Then we took it twice with two different drivers. It is now the first thing we tell any American visitor to book, ahead of the museum.
The toursIndex
The fixed route and the practical chapters. Two of them do most of the work. The rest are listed as they should be: names, one line, nothing more.
Belfast · Insider Intelligence
Belfast is the easiest northern city to get right, because one hotel does the heavy lifting and publishes enough detail to book it properly. The Merchant offers two entirely different bedroom styles under one roof, and the restaurant reservation system has a published workaround most visitors never find.
Cathedral Quarter
Ask for: Victorian Splendour if you want the building, Art Deco Decadence if you want the room
The hotel publishes bedrooms in two distinct styles, plus suites named after local writers and poets. This is a genuine choice, not a marketing label. The Victorian rooms carry original features and antique furniture in a grade A listed building.
Do not leave the style to chance at check-in. Name Victorian or Art Deco in the reservation.
Fine dining in the hotel's banking-hall room, which also hosts the published afternoon tea of sweet treats, finger sandwiches and freshly baked scones.
The hotel publishes an important caveat: if there is no online availability for your date or time, it does not mean there are no free tables. Ring 028 9026 2710 Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, or 028 9023 4888 from 5pm to 11pm for live booking advice.
Afternoon tea in The Great Room is the room's best use if dinner is booked out. It is the same ceiling.
French bistro cooking with live jazz, in the same hotel. The Cloth Ear next door serves traditional dishes, and the award-winning Cocktail Bar is published separately.
Set times are not published on the homepage. Ring the numbers above.
If the Great Room is full, Berts is not the consolation prize. On a wet Tuesday it is the better evening.
34 to 36 Bank Street in the city centre, telephone 028 9024 8544. A second site sits on Main Street in Dundrum, County Down, telephone 028 4375 1377.
Current opening hours are not published on the site. Telephone before you walk over.
Shellfish. It is the reason the place exists, and the Dundrum site sits beside the beds the oysters come from.
Belfast is a two-night city. Stretch it to three and you will spend the third day on a day trip anyway, which is fine, but book the trip rather than hoping to fill the time.
Please confirm whether our bedroom is Victorian Splendour or Art Deco Decadence, and hold a Great Room table or afternoon tea slot for our first evening.
Where to stay near Belfast
Real bases for visiting Belfast, vetted by us. Check your dates for current rates on the linked property's page. We earn a small commission if you book through these links, at no cost to you.
The Merchant Hotel
Cathedral Quarter
A Victorian bank turned into the most theatrical room in the city. Ask for the Art Deco wing if you want quiet, the Victorian wing if you want the ceiling.
Check availabilityRead our reviewCulloden Estate & Spa
Holywood, ten minutes out
A Gothic mansion above Belfast Lough with twelve acres and a proper spa. This is where we put family who want the city near, not around them.
Check availabilityRead our reviewGrand Central Belfast
City centre
The tallest hotel in Ireland, and the Observatory bar on the 23rd floor is the only place you see the whole city and the Lough at once.
Check availabilityTitanic Hotel Belfast
Titanic Quarter
The old Harland and Wolff drawing offices, where the ship was actually designed. Stay here if the Titanic story is why you came.
Check availabilityRead our reviewPlan Belfast in luxury
Cathedral Quarter, the city's grand stay.
Gardens above Belfast Lough.
In the old drawing offices.
The full county index.
The northern route.
Championship golf an hour north.
How it works, what to ask.
Want the hotels held and the days built for you? Ask the Private Client Desk.
Common questions
The Ireland Edit
A Belfast publication for travellers who would rather understand a city than photograph it, and who suspect that the best hour on this island happens at six in the evening on a basalt shelf in Antrim.
How we choose: every room is booked, every road is driven, every tour is taken and paid for. Nothing here is paid placement. If we would not send our own visiting family, it is not on the page.
Photographs: Belfast City Hall by Simon Burchell (CC BY-SA 4.0); Titanic Belfast, courtesy of Titanic Belfast; Carrick-a-Rede, courtesy of the National Trust; Divis murals by Robert Eva, Bushmills Inn by Gerald England (CC BY-SA 2.0); Old Bushmills Distillery by Supermac1961 (CC BY 2.0); Giant's Causeway and Dark Hedges via Wikimedia Commons. All via Wikimedia Commons unless noted.
This page belongs to The Ireland Edit.
We answer every note personally, usually within a day.
