June 24, 2025: Belfast Titanic and Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland

(Written by Brian)

We again rose early to get to our guided tour on time, this time in the port of Belfast, Northern Ireland. For this port, we had wanted to do two things specifically: the Titantic museum and the Giant’s Causeway. Unfortunately, those were sold out on Carnival months ago, and so we booked a tour with GetYourGuide. As this was the first morning where we didn’t check to make sure the kids were awake early, it naturally makes sense that this is the only morning they missed the alarm or some nonsense and slept in a little too long. By the time we went over to check, they were already moving, but Rachel was in a bit of a panic that they got up too late. Fortunately, we made it to breakfast and off the ship in record time. We found our tour guide (“Finn McCools”, and yes, we thought it was a pretty ridiculous name), and were off.

I should note here that this was the first day we decided to ride near the front of the bus instead of the back like we had done every other day (mainly because there are 5 seats across in the back so no one had to sit with a stranger, though Gabe might have preferred it in some ways, not sure).

After only a short 10 minute ride we arrived at the Titanic Belfast, which is the Titanic Museum in Belfast. However, I will never not think that this name is not confusing, just like this sentence. I formally apologize to all of my English teachers, but refuse to retype it for reasons unknown even to me.

The Titanic Belfast (ugh, maybe I’ll just call it the Titanic museum from now on) was INCREDIBLE, and I don’t throw that around lightly for a museum. It is built next to the slip way where the Titanic was actually constructed (since it was built in Belfast), and basically is on the site of the old shipyard. 

Slipway for the RMS Titanic (left)  and RMS Olympic and Britanic (right)

Titanic Belfast Museum looks like a star from the air to represent the White Star Line

We entered the museum, and it was seriously a whole experience. They guide you through the first level where they teach you a bit about the history of Belfast and how they did a lot of linen (honestly we mostly skipped this part since we had limited time here and at this point had finally learned that we do not do museums quickly since we tend to read… everything), and then moved on to ship building. Then they made a room that spanned all 4 floors top to bottom and made it look like a shipyard. You took an elevator to the top floor of the building and made it seem like you were actually entering the metal scaffolding that surrounded the slip way (the site of actually building the ship) while they were building it. That’s probably yet another confusing description, but really it just felt like you were scaling to the top of the metal scaffolding while they were building a ship.

Harland and Wolff Shipyard recreation inside the museum

This part of the museum was designed to look like the shipyard

Learning about the construction of the Titanic at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard

Then you got on an actual ride that Rachel described as something like a “Disneyland Peter Pan wannabe” that taught you about ship building. It even moved up and down and showed how workers hammered in hot rivets in the hull of the ship in tight, tight spaces. It was kind of amazing. At the end of the ride, we exited back on the top floor again. 

The "ride" vehicle to explore the "shipyard"

Watching reenactments and listening to accounts of how the Titanic was built

The top floor of the museum walked you through the ship building process for the Titanic itself, showing what it would look like after it left the slip way (spoiler alert: it didn’t have anything except a shell). There was a part where they had a window to show the slip way below us where they had actually built the Titanic, and that was amazing to see the ship outline on the ground out there even if you can’t see it in the picture.

The Slipways from inside the museum

Exhibit on when the Titanic left Belfast

It then showed the finishes with some pretty awesome full setups of example cabins with videos of people for reference “living” in the spaces. Hard to explain, but it really gave you an idea of what the cabins looked like in reality for each class. Meanwhile, it had stories of real people on the Titanic spread around that said where they came from and why they were on the ship that fateful night. It was sad how many were not supposed to be on it or usually didn’t sail, but just happened to board this ship this one time.

Video showing the Grand Staircase on the Titanic

2nd class accomodations

Lunch menu

Pretending to be on deck

The next level down was about the sinking of the ship and everything that went wrong. Some of the saddest things to see were the messages from Titanic to other ships. Gabe was especially distraught that they had literally told the Californian (the closest ship to them in the water that night) to “Shut up!” since they were trying to send “important” Marconi (telegram) messages for 1st class passengers and the Californian was trying to tell them that they had seen too many icebergs and had stopped for the night. The radio operator turned off their radio sometime after (unrelated to the message as he was not offended according to Wikipedia), and they missed all subsequent SOS messages from the Titanic. Fortunately, they also learned a lot of things from the sinking and showed the maritime rules and regulations that were put into place as a direct result of the investigation into the sinking. It was especially interesting because we had to do at least one of those twice on this trip: the muster drill when you board a cruise ship. That is so you know where to go in the case of an emergency.

Life jacket in front of the names of everyone who died in the sinking of the Titanic

Moving down another level, they showed the discovery of the Titanic in the 1980s and kind of how miraculous it was that they found her in the short time period that had to search for her. In one of the most amazing displays, they had a model of the ship spinning around in the center of a wide stair case that took you down the final level, with videos all around about the ship as it lays in the bottom of the sea. They even had a screen under your feet at the bottom that would show the “ocean bottom” view of the ship. I think this museum had the most interactive, immersive experience I might have ever seen. We all could have easily spent another hour or maybe even two just exploring everything that was there. We were sad to have to rush through at the end and leave, but happy with all the things we were able to see there.

Final exhibit: a giant model of the Titanic with projections on the walls surrounding it

"Nearer, My God to Thee"

Bottom floor of final exhibit room. There were screens depicting the wreckage on the floor under the large model

Never miss a good photo op

Influence of Titanic in pop culture display at the end of the tour

The design offices (on the left) next to the museum

We got back in the bus and headed towards Giant’s Causeway, but we made a quick stop at the ruins of Dunluce Castle for a quick photo. These were amazing and beautiful along the coast of Northern Ireland.

Driving along the Northern Ireland Coast

Dunluce Castle, Northern Ireland

We then stopped at the Giant’s Causeway visitor museum (which we did not go in to due to time), and first stopped for lunch at the hotel there. We got a chicken and ham tartlet and a goat cheese tart, and these were a lot better than we even thought they would be! Apparently the food here speaks to us in ways that other countries did not.

We walked down to see the star of the show, which took about 15 minutes. The Giant’s Causeway did not disappoint! Our kids were stunned to learned that this was a natural formation and not man made because it feels so unnatural to see the hexagonal rocks and especially how they are all stepped in different levels. It was also strange that the lower rocks were all very black while the higher ones were not. It probably has something to do with how it was a volcanic formation of some kind made of basalt, but as of this moment I still have not looked it up.

Walk down to Giant's Causeway

Giant's Causeway

The legend was of two giants, Finn McCool (it was at this point that we suddenly felt bad for making fun of the tour company name) who lived in Northern Ireland and Benandonner who lived in Scotland. Finn builds the causeway to reach and fight Benandonner, but flees when he realizes Benandonner is larger than expected. Benandonner then comes across the causeway to fight Finn. Finn’s wife disguises him as a baby to scare Benandonner (if the baby is that big, then Finn must be huge!) and feeds Benandonner bread with rocks (that’s the way that Finn likes it, but it breaks Benandonner, so Finn must be really tough), so Benandonner eventually runs away and destroys the causeway so that Finn can’t follow him.

Imitating our kids' faces when we spring pictures on them

Someone was kind enough to take a photo of the four of us on one of the formations jutting up and said they were excited to see it on our Christmas card. I told them our oldest wasn’t in it since he had wandered off pretty early, and Devri said she was happy to let them live their fantasy of our lives, but I had to go “Kirk mode” on them and tell the truth. Oh well.

Rachel especially loved the Giant’s Causeway and kept talking about how amazing it was. I think we easily could have all spent more time there for sure. 

Alas, it was time to go all too soon. We took as many photos as we could before we had to run back to catch the bus back up, mostly because there was no way we were going to make Devri climb back up that hill. I think it would have killed her.

We made a quick stop at Portaneevy viewpoint to see the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge down below. Too bad we weren’t able to make it down to the rope bridge itself since would be amazing/possibly terrifying, but the view was incredible. Seriously, this whole coast line gave Pride and Prejudice dream sequence vibes for us, so we couldn’t resist capturing this picture of Devri dreaming herself onto the Irish coast.

Portaneevy

Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge (between the mainland and that island)

Michael's head is blocking the rope bridge

Devri's Pride and Prejudice shot

We were also able to see Rathlin island (part of Northern Ireland) and Scotland behind it (just a shadow).

We made it back on the ship in plenty of time, 

This Towel Animal was brutally attacked by Brian

But don't worry; we fixed it

and at dinner we started talking about the day. In perhaps the best review of the day, Michael said it was “a banger day” and gave it 5 stars (ok, maybe I did the stars thing). Everyone 100% agreed. Our only regret was we didn’t have longer at these two places! I guess we’ll just have to come back and dedicate more time to them someday. Shucks.

After dinner we browsed the shops a bit with Rachel. Devri and Rachel got their cruise charms. We were disappointed to realize that we missed the London bus charm, but also delighted that they had charms on this cruise from many places we’ve been on our trip, including the Roman colosseum, a Venetian gondola, a bicycle from Amsterdam, and even the evil eye from Greece (this was sadly sold out). They got the colosseum and planned to come back for the rest as they became available throughout the cruise since they only release one each night.

A glimpse into life in the kids' interior cabin. Photo courtesy of Rachel

We got back to our cabin, and then unfortunately remembered about laundry. We gathered up all of the dirty clothes and found the launderette on our floor. 

After a lot of shuffling and figuring things out and spending a solid 2 hours there, we finished all of the clothes and headed back for the night. We were most happy that that was the final load of laundry (knock on wood) for the entire trip, and the next loads will be done at home!