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Exploring Northern Ireland - A 3 day Belfast itinerary · UK Travel Planning

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website, Tracey Collins.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: In this podcast, Tracey shares destination guides, travel tips and itinerary ideas, as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages, from historic castles to beautiful islands, and from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to episode 124 of the UK Travel Panel podcast.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: This week, myself and Doug are here to chat about our three-day Belfast itinerary.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Now this itinerary builds on or is part of actually our I think it was our 16, 17 days that we travelled around the UK are I think it was about 16, 17 days that we traveled around the UK and if you want to have an overview of that itinerary, listen in to episode 119 where we kind of talk about each of the different places that we went and we kind of not in a lot of detail, but gives you a kind of overview of everything that we did Does that make sense.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: It does make total sense, yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So what we thought we'd do is because we've got a lot of interest in in some of those particular destinations that you actually might be thinking.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: You know what, I quite fancy going to belfast, so you're interested now.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: You may want to go to chester, you might want to go to the isle of sky, so we decided what we would do is for destinations that we haven't already talked quite a lot about.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: So, for example, um edinburgh, which we have talked quite extensively about in the podcast in quite a few episodes.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We thought those places that we haven't we would do dedicated podcast episodes, and there will be far more of those style coming in 2025 because we have been asked for destination guides.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: So this week's episode is all about Belfast.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: It is so.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: It was my first time in Belfast.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It was not Doug's first time, you've been before.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: I have been before, a few years back, but I have been.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: So I was really excited to go and we spent three full days there.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: We arrived on the Thursday evening and we left on the Monday morning, so we had all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So I wanted it to be a pretty full itinerary to do as much as we could and experience as much as we could of the city itself, but also get out and about to explore a little bit more of Northern Ireland as well.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so do you want to talk a little bit about how we got there from Dublin?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Because we actually yeah, that was the first part of us actually how we got from Dublin up to Belfast.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we took the train from Dublin Connolly Station.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: It should be a two hour train journey but currently there's some engineering works going on north of Newry, so the first hour was train and then we had to take a bus, which was part of the train ticket we purchased.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: So that arrived into Belfast Lanyon Station.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Now Lanyon Station is still taking trains at the moment because, I mentioned before on the last podcast, there's a new travel interchange for trains and buses called the grand central.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: It's open for buses but not yet open for trains.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: So the train, the bus, arrived at the lanyon station so when does it open though the grand central station?
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: it's still work in progress.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: I think it's early next year.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: I might be the end of this year, but I think certainly for next year okay.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: So then we had a slight problem, though, in that we arrived at Lanyon and then we were a bit stuck.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: We were a little bit stuck and it was cold, yes, so what happened?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: So we arrived and we had planned to take an Uber to the hotel that we were staying in, but there was no Ubers available.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: No, there wasn't.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: And we stood there going oh dear.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: And yeah, there literally were no Ubers.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I was on my app trying to get an Uber and we couldn't.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So we were actually really lucky that there happened to be a taxi that happened to have pulled up at the station, so we hopped in there and we went over to our hotel.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So we were staying at the Hampton by Hilton Hotel, which was about 25 minutes by taxi, about 25 minutes, yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So it took us actually quite a while but it was a fantastic hotel.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I have to say, we really liked that hotel, didn't we?
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was excellent situation as well.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wherever was located is that?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was absolutely located, perfectly, and it's located right next to the new grand central station.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, literally five minutes, which was fantastic, and I'll tell you why, because of what we did on monday.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: But and also subsequent days, which will go into more detail.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: It was perfectly located for those as well absolutely so.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: By the time we got in honestly it was it was fairly late in the evening, wasn't it on that, on that of that thursday evening.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: So we didn't do anything else.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: We literally got in the station, got the taxi, got to the hotel, checked in and that was about it for that day.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So that gave us of day one, which was the first day itinerary in Belfast.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So, I have to say as well, the hotel breakfast was outstanding.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So it really set us up.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: One thing we do like to do is, if we book a hotel and I must say we do love bed and breakfast and guest houses as well for this is that if you get a breakfast included, it does set you up for the rest of the day and it just can save you money as well anyway.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So what we did was we decided that that first day we were going to take the hop on, hop off bus around belfast to get orientated and familiarize ourselves with the city and also to go out to the titanic.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So that was our main goal for that day.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: So do you want to talk a little bit about that?
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: yeah, so the stop one on the city site scene tour buses was just about 10 minutes walk from our hotel.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: So we arrived there in good time before the first bus actually took off.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: So some photos had a look around, yeah, so we jumped on that and we planned pretty much what we're going to do the rest of the day, didn't we really?
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: yeah, we did basically looked at the stops and, uh, the first stop they want we decided that we want to get off at was the titanic belfast yeah, and that's stop number five.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: To be honest with you, the bus pretty much emptied there.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I think everybody was saying that to start with it did, and and I know I've heard that actually the best thing to do is to go to titanic belfast when it opens, because it can get really, really busy.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It was even still busy.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: We arrived really early on when it just opened, but it was still actually quite busy, um, so we did have a little bit of a queue.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: We just bought the tickets on the day when we arrived.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Oh actually, no, I didn't.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I bought them through get your guide.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: I had to exchange a voucher, that's right.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: So I had actually booked the tickets, that's right yeah, that's right and so, but we're having a good time.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: We had a good look around outside, because there's a site to take photos with and there's lots outside to take photos of as well.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and then it took us about two hours to go through the whole Titanic experience.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: It is what it is.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I mean I enjoyed it.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: It was definitely interesting, and we'd actually previously been at a Titanic exhibition in Brisbane.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: We had the Titanic experience.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was interesting.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: What else can you say about Titanic?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Honestly?
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I know it's probably one of the number one tourist attractions in Belfast.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: One reason that people will go to Belfast because they want to go and see the Titanic.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: So definitely include it into your itinerary and, honestly, using the Hop-on Hop-off bus is probably the best, easiest way to get there, because then you come out and you can jump on the Hop-on, hop-off bus to another destination to follow in the route round.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's exactly what we did, isn't it?
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: We jumped back on and then we headed.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Well, we stayed on the bus for the next pass, didn't we?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: We did, yeah, so we literally did basically a tour of Belfast to familiarise ourselves.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So we went down the Shankill Road, saw some wall murals, the jail, Crumlin Road, yeah.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Falls Road.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: We saw the Titanic Memorial Garden.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: That's back where we got off, near the Civic.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Hall, oh, and we got on, yeah, so we got off.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: While we got on, basically at kind of the end we did the whole circuit that we did.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we didn't get off there, though, apart from we just got off at the end, didn't we?
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: We just kind of went with listening to the commentary and that's right yeah.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just kind of saying familiarising ourselves a bit with Belfast, that's right a bit with the geography of the area.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we did go.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: It was actually we were, so we did get off and have a wander around the titanic memorial garden.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I looked for some photos around the cirical.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: There's all shopping areas around there some shops and shops, yeah, definitely, yeah, so lots of shops and things to do that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: So that was basically our first day and it sounds like doesn't sound like we did a lot, but actually we did, because you know, the hop on, hop off bus can take you quite a few hours to get around and then go into titanic.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, we spent probably about two hours, but you could spend longer.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah easily.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, and when you go to Titanic Experience as well not to Titanic Experience, the Titanic Museum just say there's a couple of places that you can eat.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a fantastic gift shop.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I'd say so if you needed to get a drink or a sandwich or something to eat afterwards or before.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: There is somewhere you can do that.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, and you can actually walk out to where the titanic launched from as well.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: So we did walk out there didn't we onto the uh, the waterfront there?
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: yeah, yeah, so that was basically the friday.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: So then, and bearing in mind, I had booked this beforehand, so I'd booked the tickets for the titanic, where I hadn't actually booked for the Hop On, hop Off bus, we'd just purchased those when we arrived.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: So then the next day, on the Saturday, I had booked a full day tour, and I will link in the show notes to all of the different tours and companies that we booked through.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And I actually use Get your Guide because, again, I find it useful if the last minute sort of 24 hours before most you can cancel, so it's useful to have.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: So we had a fabulous day out, didn't we?
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, we really did.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: It was just, yeah, all the boxes to tick.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: We had a nice easy walk to the meeting point.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: It was from 8 o'clock in the morning.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Which is close to the hotel again.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: So again, this hotel is just so well situated it was the bus operator's macumbs um.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: The driver was actually entertaining all day, oh patrick, our driver.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Honestly, patrick, if you listen to this, you were fantastic, you're absolutely fantastic.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: But not only was patrick fantastic.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I have to say everybody we were on that bus with was brilliant yeah, that's, that's true.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: It's one of those unusual days where every single stop, every single person was back on in good time and it was all smooth and yeah, easy, yeah, and he said that as well.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: He said I've never had so many people manage to get back on a bus exactly at the time that I've requested you'd be back on, so it was really good.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: So, a lot of the places that we um well, we stopped off some places for a shorter period of time than others.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So do you want to talk about some of the places that we?
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Well, we stopped off some places for a shorter period of time than others.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: So do you want to talk about some of the places we stopped?
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, one of the places we stopped off first off was Carrick Fergus the castle.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: There we didn't actually go in the castle, but we stopped off at the harbour area there to have a look and some photos.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: And then we jumped back on, we did the Andron Coastline and we went to the carn low, uh, conlock harbour.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, that was more or less a comfort break and shops and yeah, and people had a lot of people had lunch, though you could, they could book lunch, because he did come through and ask if he wanted to have um book lunch, and then he would have told this the place that was stopped at what people's order was.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: But we decided we weren't that bothered we were.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: So we didn't, we just had a cup of tea.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: That's right, yeah.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: So then obviously the highlight of the day is obviously the Giant's Causeway, so that's obviously where we were heading towards.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: But we stopped off.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I will actually talk about some of the shorter stops that you either stop at on the way or on the way back.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: So we stopped off at the Carrick-O-Reed Rope Bridge just to have a look at that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: We did stop off at the Dark Hedges, so if you're familiar with Game of Thrones, you probably will be able to recognise Dark Hedges.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: So we stopped there for enough time to walk up the whole lane and then back down again.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: We went to Bushmills Distillery.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the famous Bushmills, yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to think where else we stopped Dunluce Castle.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: These are all quick stops, so you managed to go and have some really some lovely pictures of that.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: But obviously the highlight of the day was the Giant's Causeway.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: And that's where you spend most of the time as well.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: So we're at the Giant's Causeway.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: You've got red or blue walking routes.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: I mean there's yellow ones as well, but further away Take longer.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Red Route is the one that takes you sort of out and then back in the other side of the causeway.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: There's lots of steps there.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: There's something called the Shepherd Steps 162 steps down, but you get some great views.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: The Blue Route is the direct road back to the bus.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: That's the one I took.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: So I'm not a hiking fan at all.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So I kind of cheated and I took the Blue Route but I didn't even take the Blue Route because I took the blue route, but I didn't even take the blue route because I took the boss.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: So basically it's a I think it was a pound each way on the boss, yeah, and I played with contactless.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: So I went down on the boss and went back on the boss.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: By this point it was a bit rainy as well.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So I'm just going to say that on my defense, and it was windy and I know you said those steps were a bit slippery.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: They were a bit slippery.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: They're a bit, yeah, slippery on the foot, yeah.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So make sure, if you got the giant's causeway seriously, you need to have a sensible footwear, really do need to have sensible footwear.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So, basically, doug walked around the top of the cliffs and down these steps around to the giant's causeway and I went on the bus and I met him down at the bottom of the hill beside the.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I was actually got down there and thought how am I going to see doug because there are so many people.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: But actually it was easy to find it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: You seemed to be walking towards me as I was walking down towards the giant's causeway itself.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: So we kind of met up and we took lots of pictures pictures and videos of all the uh columns, the basalt columns, yeah yeah, and I will share all these in the show notes.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So do do pop over and have a look at those, because it is fascinating.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: That was, and it was a big bucket list thing for me.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: I'd always wanted to kind of go and see the giant schools right, and clearly for quite a lot of the other people, because there was a lot of people there that day um, it's obviously a popular place to go.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So, um, we decided that we'd get the bus back up, so doug just had to pay for a pound to get the bus back up and I'd bought a return ticket so you can walk it if you want to walk it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Honestly, um, it's not that far, but saying that you were quite surprised when we took the bus up, just that it was further than you thought it was than I thought yeah and it is up a hill a bit of a waiting queue for the bus return yeah
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: but it um went down pretty quickly yeah, yeah, that it was fine and, um, it's, it's pretty, um, in terms of the bus for accessibility, the wheelchairs can get onto the onto the uh uh bus and and off the bus.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So, um, you can get down there to see if you, if you have some any accessibility concerns.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: But I thought it was good, I thought it was worth it.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: We did have.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: It's really funny because the entire trip we had beautiful weather, but about 10 minutes at the giant schools where it went crazy, it went a bit.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: It was windy, really windy, and a lot of rain, and so I had the rain jackets on, but but the whole day was it was a lot of fun and I thought it was.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: It wasn't expensive.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I can't remember the exact price, but I remember it wasn't expensive.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I will put a link to this company because we thought they were outstanding and McCombs Coach Travel is what they're called, but do use our link please if you're going to book.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: We left at 8 am in the morning and we got back at 6 pm.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: 6 pm, yeah.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: There was three coaches.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: During the entire journey we were coach number one.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: We stayed ahead of everybody the whole day.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: We did, yeah, we did.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So that was basically the saturday.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: So by the time we got back, that was, that was basically the day really we'd had a good day.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: So we just sat and had, um, had some drinks, uh, and I think we had a meal in the hotel, didn't we?
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: So we had something to eat in the hotel and and some drinks and just kind of chilled out for the rest of the day and then.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: So that just left us with our third day, third day itinerary.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So on the third day we decided you can't go to Belfast and not learn about the troubles in Belfast and Northern Ireland, and so we'd heard that the best way to do this is to book a political black cab tour.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: So that's exactly what we did, didn't we?
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: We did.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: It takes about 40 minutes.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Again, the meeting point was near the hotel.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: What five minutes walk from our hotel as well.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It was actually ideal yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: It was just us two, obviously a private tour, and it takes about 40, 45 minutes and it was well worth doing.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: It talked extensively from both sides of the history and particularly in detail about the Good Friday Peace Agreement and the modern-day yeah, kind of yeah, peace process and kind of just where, where things are in in belfast and I guess in terms of you know recent events, I mean in our lifetime, certainly 70s and 80s, and kind of living through that, and I I think it was it's the first time that I felt that I kind of had had it explained to me.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So I have to say a huge thank you to tony, who was our taxi driver who took us around.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: The tour is only, it's only an hour, but honestly it was.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: It was fabulous, wasn't it?
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: yeah, I think the actual tour was 40 minutes, but we're chatting afterwards.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: It was excellent, though.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: It is, and tony shared his own family's life experiences as well, which was yeah, no, it was really good.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: So, honestly and I know I had a friend who was in belfast in august and had really wanted to do this trip and could not get on because it was fully booked so I highly recommend booking ahead if it's something that you want to do.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And honestly, I really think if you go to northern ireland and you, you need to really learn a little bit more about the troubles and um kind of recent events over the last kind of my lifetime is the last 50 years or so.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Um, I mean, it goes back into history as well.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: So you do learn a lot about the background, don't you?
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: You do.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: To everything that happened, yeah, so that was, that was a really interesting experience.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Um, and then we went back to the hotel and we booked a Sunday roast.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: We wanted to have a good Sunday roast.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: It was a recommended location.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: It was, and it was fabulous, wasn't it?
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: It really was.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I remember the name of it, it was called the Bowery.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Good job.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Doug remembers these things.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was called the Bowery and it was absolutely.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: It was very good it was a sharing platter.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Good, so it's a sharing platter.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's something slightly different to what you usually have your own plate.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: This was a shared yeah.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: So again, I'll put some pictures in the show notes so you can have a look at that.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: So if you're in belfast, we highly recommend that you book in.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Again, you will need to book.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Make sure that you book in at the bowery and go hungry, because there was plenty for the two of us there was and actually we took the.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: We took the bus.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say as well, we just hopped on the bus, which was really easy.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: A local bus.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Local bus system.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: We just found out the number of the bus that we needed, jumped on the local bus and, you know, just used Google Maps I think I did, knew where to get off and literally we're like two minutes walk from the Bowery, so that.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: So that was really easy.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't expensive again, I can't remember, off the top of my head it was only a few pound and I played with contactless again.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: So really easy.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So that was the sunday evening, so that was kind of three days up.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And then we had a lovely experience on the sunday, didn't we, when we met that lovely american couple that's right.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we just in passing.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: We exchanged a few words and then, long story short, we spent the next two hours chatting away while you were drinking cocktails yeah, enjoying cocktails.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: So, hi, candy, if you're listening, it was lovely to meet you in Belfast.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: It was just, it was really lovely.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: And then, I guess so the next day, we knew we were going to be leaving very early.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to let Doug talk a little bit more about the organisation, because he organised our transportation on the Monday morning because we were heading to Scotland.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: So when we do our itinerary consults we get asked a lot how to the different means of transportation between Belfast and Glasgow, and one of the ones that's come up more than once is a company called Hannon Coaches and Hannon Coaches we call it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: It was a 6.30 early start in the following morning.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: I'm not the best coast traveller, so I contacted them and they arranged for me to have front seats, which was absolutely perfect, and it was so straightforward it was very easy.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I'd already walked the route just to see how long it would take from the hotel to the as I mentioned before the Grand Central station From the hotel, from the hotel to the as I mentioned before the Grand Central Station five minutes.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: So it was from the bus stop number 18.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure if that's permanently located for that, but it was on this occasion because the trains are not yet running into there.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: So we arrived in good time.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: The driver turned up and within a few minutes we were on the way.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what time was that in the morning?
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: That was early.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: 6.30 was the departure time.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: There was two a day.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: The next one was from late morning departed, but we wanted the early one because we wanted to be in Glasgow as early as we possibly could.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: So 6.30, we did about 10 minutes drive to the Belfast port.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: There was another collection pickup for some more passengers.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: I don't think the bus was full.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: I think it was only probably about half full overall.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah it was, and then we boarded the boat very easily.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah on the coach.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the coach drives straight on, so you just find out exactly which side of the boat you get off the coach on, so you can actually find the coach at the end of it.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, starboard, we were on Starboard.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: I was going to say we were on the starboard side.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it includes your ferry ticket as well.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: So we left there about half past seven the ferry, and we arrived at just ten o'clock, about two and a half hours.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Very smooth crossing.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: It was a smooth crossing and we're on the way.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Two hours drive to Glasgow.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, glasgow, new Canham.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Super Station.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: One little tip if you are taking this journey you're going from Belfast to Glasgow sit on the left-hand side, because you've got a great view of the Firth of Clyde and there's the Elsa Craig Little Island there as well, which is worth having a look at.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: But it was very straightforward, very, very easy.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: It.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Honestly, was it right really, from the morning just walking across to catch the coach, getting on the coach, going to the ferry, um, getting off at the ferry, they say we're on the ferry for a few hours.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: You just sat and actually in the kind of lounge kind of restaurant a bit and we had, we had cups of tea, I think, we had bacon sandwiches, um, again, it was very smooth.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: So we both wandered off at different times having a little bit of a look around the ferry.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: It was quite busy.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not surprised because it's so cheap.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: What a fantastic and easy, easy way to get from Belfast to Glasgow.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: I had no idea, literally, I had no idea.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it blew my mind just how easy it was to do this.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And also, also, when you get off and you're doing that coach trip to to glasgow from the ferry pool, the, the views were amazing, it was, it was stunning, absolutely stunning it was, and we were lucky with the weather as well.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: We were again we did have lovely weather, and then we arrived in glasgow itself and then we had a again a short walk to to our hotel there yeah, we did so that was basically our three-day itinerary, from the from leaving dublin till arriving in glasgow.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: We had those three days the friday, saturday, sunday in belfast.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Um, I think we made the most of it.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I was very keen to go back and explore more than northern ireland, as my first visitor said, but it was fantastic it was, and we kept it simple in a lot of ways, didn't we?
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: we?
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Did yes, we did a lot of things, but we weren't rushed off a fee, we weren't literally rushing here then everywhere were we?
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: no, I think I think that worked really well.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: So if you're listening and thinking, oh actually you know what I fancy doing, going to belfast, you know you could really would do two or three days because having the hop on, hop off course, the titanic the one day, the next day doing the full day truck, because those that if you're going to go to um giant's causeway and do that, it's a full day out, so that that's going to be one whole day taken, and then the third day having the opportunity to do the political black taxi tour and then just relaxing that afternoon and having a lovely sunday roast.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you wanted to shorten it, I guess you, you could have the hop-on, hop-off course, do the Titanic or even just take a taxi to the Titanic and then do the black taxi political tour the same day.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: So you could do it in two if you really wanted to, but I highly recommend not doing it in less than that.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: No, I think we have the right balance.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, the Sunday afternoon we took it easy and just had a little stroll and the sun was shining, yeah it was really good.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: So that summarizes it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: So, as usual, you can find all the information about what we did in Belfast the different tours up on our bus, the Titanic, the Belfast black taxi company, all that, all that information that we just talked about will be in the show notes, which are at uktravelplanningcom.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Forward slash, episode 124.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: So I think that'll be it until next week.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: So until next week, as always, happy uk travel planning.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the uk travel planning podcast.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: As always, show notes can be found at uktravelplanningcom.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: If you've enjoyed the show, why not leave us feedback via text or a review on your favourite podcast app?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: We love to hear from you and you never know.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: You may receive a shout out in a future episode.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: But, as always, that just leaves me to say until next week.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Happy UK travel planning.