This post is for you who would like to learn more about how we booked our private tour of Northern Ireland, where we stayed and where we found inspiration.
Why Northern Ireland?
Originally, it was the plan that our trip to Ireland should only consist of a weekend in Dublin. Then i started looking at what excursions where available from Dublin – and that appeared to be an expensive thing to do… Suddenly, I had convinced myself that i just had to go see Giant’s Causeway on our visit to Ireland. The problem then was that Giant’s Causeway is placed in the most northern of Northern Ireland, and a day trip here would consist of many hours of driving and not that many hours of fun. So the original plans of going on a weekend city break had to change a little…
How we booked our trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland
We started by booking airline tickets from Copenhagen to Dublin ourselves, as we stumbled upon a good price with SAS. We then considered whether or not we should rent a car and drive around ourselves, but we quickly agreed that with only 4 full days in the country, and NO experience driving in the left side of the road, we wanted to find out how much a private tour with a driver cost.
We ended up contacting Little Gem Tours, which is a smaller, privately owned tour operator in Ireland. I wrote to them with our wishes for the trip, with information on which days we had available, what kind of accomodation we wanted, what we really wanted to see on our trip, and what other interests we had. Then one of the owners, Maggie, returned to us with an offer for 5 adults and an itinerary which we could look at and change if we wanted to. It was very easy, and through the whole process, the contact with Little Gem Tours has been nothing but pleasant.
Let me just put one thing straight – it is NOT a cheap way of travelling! However, we did get a tour exactly like we wanted, and since it was a private tour, we could spend all the time we wanted to at the different attractions. We did not have much time available – only 2 full days actually – and this way we got the perfect introduction to some of the best things Northern Ireland has to offer.
At the end of our private tour, we were dropped off in Dublin at the aparthotel we had booked ourselves. After a long day with many new impressions, it was great to be dropped off right at the door step.
Our route
One of the main advantages by booking a private tour is that you do not waste a lot of time! We had a fairly packed day to day program, but at no time we felt like we had to rush through the experiences.
The map below shows an overview of our tour. If you would like to read more about our day to day program, you can read more in this post.
Where we stayed
We had a total of 5 nights on our trip to both Dublin and Northern Ireland. The first 2 night were booked by Little Gem Tours, as they were a part of our private tour.
We spend both nights at a couple of great B&B’s with lovely hosts. I must admit that B&B isn’t something we have used a lot before, but it was just the right thing to do here in Ireland. The two B&B’s we stayed at were very different, and you can read more about them right here.
Where I found inspiration
I can spend hour after hour looking for inspiration to my next trip online, and in connection to that, Pinterest is my best friend! You can always check out my Ireland and Northern Ireland Pinterest Board, but I will also mention some of the websites I found to be very helpful or inspirational in my research process:
The official tourism organization in Northern Ireland, Discover Northern Ireland
If you are considering a trip to Northern Ireland I can only say: Go for it! You can see all my posts about Northern Ireland and find more inspiration to your trip right here.
Visited in July 2017
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