Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / United Kingdom / Northern Ireland
 |  | Travel Reviews : Northern Ireland |
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| | | | Review by Bernard Kuc from Purley
Having spent the week before in north coast of Wales, we were very impressed with (and much prefered) the north east coast of Northern Ireland. Besides being better value for money, it was also more relaxed, friendly and unspoilt. It was a pleasure to be in such peaceful and undeveloped countryside with many walks, forests and beaches to explore. We will definetly be coming back.
Review by visitor
Carnlough , situated along the Antrim Coast road, recently voted one of the best views in the world.
I just love that drive discovering a little village around every turn from Drain’s Bay, Ballygally, Glenarm and then to Carnlough.
On a good clear day you can see right over to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.
We stopped at Carnlough and although the weather wasn’t great we had a good walk around the harbour, now owned by Larne council it has been refurbished in recent years.
They have also regenerated the Harbour House following investment from the International Fund for Ireland. It now houses a community resource centre with access for the general public to fax, photocopying and computer facilities at a nominal fee. One retail unit houses a shop for fishing tackle with a boat hire and a boat rod facility, while the upstairs unit is in the process of being let.The original Harbour House was built by Mark Francis Wilson of Drumalla around 1850 as administration offices.
We also made our way to the Cranny Falls. A substantial scheme carried out by the Department of Watercourse Management under instruction from Larne Borough Council has transformed the old railway line used in the heyday of the local limestone industry into a most attractive part of the Ulster Way.
The walkway, which has just been completed by means of a wooden bridge linking into the quarry area, leads to one of Carnlough’s scenic jewels – The Cranny Falls-a beauty spot not to be missed by nature enthusiasts.
Hungry so we decided to pop into the Londonderry Arms, welcoming and warm with a pleasing reception area leading to a room with a grand fireplace. Lots of paintings and antiques caught our eyes.
It was High Tea menu…which was good value for money.
Starters were £3.5-5…..like Soup of the day at £3.95 including great wheaten bread.
We had heard about the Ballymoney Ham Salad £10.95 so we opted for one of those and the Fillet of salmon on a bed of leeks £12.65. Good sized portions with fresh produce locally grown.
We were not going home hungry.
Desserts looked good but we resisted. £3.85 ranging from Fried ice cream to apple pie.
The service was excellent and friendly….there is good disabled access and parking.
All in all a positive experience.
Review by Quentin Adams from middleham
NEED A REALLY GOOD MAP TO GET AROUND . HAVE NEVER DRIVEN OVER SO MANY BADLY REPAIRED ROADS
THE SCENCERY IS FABULOUS THE PEOPLE FRIENDLY THE WHOLE PLACE WAS GREAT WILL GO BACK.
Hooked on Ulster
From the Mail on Sunday
Was the fish Chris Tarrant caught in the teeming waters of the Sperrins a perch, a salmon, a pike or a sprat? I could have phoned a friend better versed in the piscatorial arts than I am, but on the banks of a riffling river at the bottom of a remote valley deep in the heart of Northern Ireland, you don't get much of a signal on your mobile.
Ask the audience? What did a few inquisitive cows leaning over a gate know about fish?
I was in a tucked-away car park alongside what is reputed to be one of the best fishing rivers in Europe, the Bann, reading a promotional sign featuring our illustrious quizmaster, who is a regular visitor here. Forgive the Sperrins marketing people for extracting full benefit from that picture of him with the fish. Northern Ireland tourism needs, and deserves, all the friends it can find.
Not that there's any shortage of famous people from this green and mountainous region. Half the cottages seem to have been the former home to the grandfather of some American president or other. Two locals became senior American generals, ending up fighting on opposite sides in the Civil War. A man from Strabane printed the Declaration of Independence.
I spotted some poems on the wall of a pub. 'Who wrote those?' I asked. 'Ah, they're by Seamus. Ah, you know him, sure you do.' I confessed I did not. 'Ah, sure you know Seamus. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Seamus Heaney. He lived around here.'
An enormous sign adorned one remote road junction. The community was drawing another of its travelling scions back to its bosom. 'Welcome Home, Tyrone Tom. Everybody's big brother.' I think there was a reference to another TV programme there. Now, holding tight to all its lucky charms and praying there aren't any more setbacks in the peace process, Northern Ireland is extending its welcome to the rest of us, inviting us into some of the least-known places in the UK.
'You must see the Giant's Causeway and where the Titanic was built in Belfast,' said a friend when I said where I was going. But there's more to it all than that.
Eugene Kielt, my host at Laurel Villa guesthouse in the quiet town of Magherafelt, a 40-minute drive from Belfast International Airport, is one of the pioneer guides to this hitherto unsung centre of Northern Ireland. His promotional leaflet promises several rewarding days of touring to places I never knew existed.
Water is big in the Sperrins, which begins just east of here at Lough Neagh, the biggest lake in the UK. Then there are all those rivers. The region's highest peak, Sawel Summit (678 metres and 600 million years old), stretches west all the way to the border with Eire.
There is no point in pretending that the troubles of the past 30 years passed this tranquil region by. Magherafelt, Draperstown and Cookstown, with their luxuriously wide streets, were built for the first Scottish and English settlers in the 1600s and 1700s. But you sense the desire to move on. There are new visitor centres and restaurants, like the excellent and artfully designed Gardiners in Magherafelt, that wouldn't look out of place in Chelsea.
Travel Guide: Northern Ireland
Who needs to be a millionaire?
From the Mail on Sunday
Although I've been fishing in Ireland for about 30 years, I hadn't been to Ulster for ages. Then I was invited to explore the potential of the area north of Belfast. I quickly discovered that the fishing is excellent, the scenery superb and the Irish as friendly and eager to please as everywhere else on this beautiful island.
We fished all day and drank Guinness and listened to outrageous stories all night. That was seven years ago and I've been back every year since.
I have never had any problems at all over there. Place names like Strabane, Crossmaglen, Omagh and Newry might have been infamous in the Troubles, but they are also the centres for some of the best pike and salmon fishing in Europe.
Just a mile from Strabane, where the police station is surrounded with barbed wire and anti-rocket defences, we fished for salmon in the magical River Mourne on a beautiful spring morning with the woodlands all around us filled with birdsong.
The countryside is stunning, that lush green colour you find everywhere in Ireland, with well-kept pine forests leading right down to the water's edge and blue, misty mountains on the skyline.
One advantage for the visiting salmon fisherman is that, unlike in Scotland, in Ireland you can fish for salmon on Sundays. This makes a big difference to the angler who can only get away for a weekend.
For the coarse fisherman, rivers are awash with roach, bream and pike. It's a particularly good place to visit in spring when there's no river fishing in England because of the close season.
All around the Strabane area there are plenty of salmon in the Mourne and its beautiful little tributary, the Finn, and close to Enniskillen we fished Lower Lough Erne and caught dozens of pike including a 29 1/2-pounder - one of the longest fish I've ever seen.
Travel Guide: Northern Ireland
Hooked on fishing
There are lots of things I'd love to learn, given the time - elephant hunting, paragliding and whatnot - but fishing has never really been one of them. Too slow, too silly, too wet.
But when the opportunity came for us to learn this summer, I saw a chance to redeem my maternal image.
We were due to stay with a friend near Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, and the local tourist office confidently told us that one of Ireland's top fishing teachers, Michael Shortt, operated in the area.
My son Ben was keen (or had been, 10 years earlier) and half the point of a family is that members show an interest in each other's passions. We would all sign on.
Well, our daughters wriggled out of it somehow, so on the first day only four of us showed up: my husband, Shaun, and me, Alex (16) and Ben (14). And I have to say that by lunchtime I was, as it were, hooked.
This could be because the first thing you learn about fishing (or at any rate, casting) is that women are better at it. Happily, you don't learn this just once; you are told it repeatedly throughout the day.
We began at Rossahilly House, learning the principles over a cup of coffee.
'Women learn quicker,' Michael started, 'because they listen better.' I could see Shaun thinking, right: you want listening? You'll get listening. He had that look of someone who was going to out-listen everyone. 'They're also less competitive,' Michael added.
We went out on the lawn to put the principles into practice. Cast, retrieve; cast, retrieve. 'You see,' Michael said. 'Look at your mother.' This is all right, I thought.
Over lunch, Eric, the owner of Rossahilly, took me aside. 'Don't tell the others,' he said, 'but you're casting much better than they are. Women always do.'
Travel Guide: Northern Ireland
A celtic cocktail that leaves you reeling
From the Daily Mail
There's no word of a lie in it: the Irish like to talk. They also go out of their way to be helpful to strangers - which means asking for directions can be an entertaining business.
In Londonderry, I asked two men on a corner where to find a particular pub. One took me by the arm and led me into the road to point out the way; the other followed, offering advice. By now we could all see the pub, 30 yards or so away, but that didn't deter my acquaintances.
'Just down there on the left. You'll find a pedestrianised crossing opposite. It should take you, oh, the best part of a couple of minutes if you don't rush.' I was left with the feeling, not for the first time, that the one thing you will never lack in Ireland is friendship - and especially not in Londonderry.
This compact city is intriguing - and blessed with a beautiful location. Standing on the opposite bank of the River Foyle, you look across to a miniature walled city, with deep green hills behind and the silvery sweep of the river before you. Londonderry sits on a low bluff, the perfect position for a trading settlement, and, indeed, the site has been continuously inhabited since the 6th century.
Inside the 17th-century stone walls, the city is small enough that you can see clearly from one arched gate across to another. Walking the mile-long ramparts provides wonderful views over the town and river; and inside the walls lie several small gems. St Columba's Long Tower Roman Catholic church houses two exquisite paintings by Raphael. The Protestant St Columb's Cathedral dates from 1633 and is perfectly preserved.
Some 60% of the city's population is under 25, a fact reflected in the buzzy pubs, cafes and restaurants. In the Metro Bar, a noisy lunchtime crowd was demolishing pints of Harp and Guinness. From the name, I had expected trendy minimalism, but it was a solid, old-fashioned local with a mixed clientele. The bar staff were young and cheery: middle-aged housewives sat laughing together.
An old boy with a newspaper was studying the racing form and watching the bar TV as his horses came in - usually unplaced. 'I've been sitting here since God was a boy,' he said, as I commiserated. 'I'll never learn.'
That night, Oyster's restaurant, with its wooden floor and uncluttered decor, turned out not to have oysters on its menu ('except on special occasions') but it did have the best Tom Yam soup I have tasted outside Thailand, and superb pan-seared salmon.
Travel Guide: Northern Ireland
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| | | | Time for a story
Give the Irish an empty calendar and they fill it with festivals. 'You should have been here last week/last month,' people kept telling me. For the Sperrins Hillwalking Festival; for the Appalachian and Blue Grass Music Festival (celebrating music-making exported by settlers from Ulster); for the Story Telling Festival, and so on.
Stories come at you from all directions in the Sperrins. Some made up, some quite true. Richard Mulholland, who turned the stables next to his ancestral Georgian seat Ballyscullion House into holiday lets and provides his guests with some of the best fishing around, tells the true story of the US Army commandeering the mansion from his grandparents in the war.
They built them a home down by the lake - enchanted waters, of course - and one morning the old couple came up to the big house to find every last soldier had left in the night. They had gone to France, where most were cut down as one of the first units ashore in the D-Day landings. They are immortalised in the film Saving Private Ryan.
The 17th-century house at Springhill acquired a longer lasting guardian, the National Trust. 'Perhaps the least-known National Trust property in the UK,' enthuses custodian Patricia Law. It was built in a clearing in the original Ulster Forest, among 1,000-year-old yews and oaks.
The house balances modest proportions with big pedigree. In the library my hand hovered over an ancient set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, part of 'the best country house collection of books in Ireland, and all of them read'. Recently they discovered the largest area of handmade wallpaper in the UK, covered over for 200 years.
Wallpaper is no barrier to the resident ghost, believed to be Olivia Lenox-Conyngham, however. Patricia explained her excellent relations with the spectre. 'She doesn't trouble me. I never say anything nasty about her and tell my guides to do the same. The worst I say is that she was highly strung.'
In search of salmon
In Lough Melvin, right on the border between north and south, we didn't actually catch any salmon - but there were hundreds leaping infuriatingly all around our boat.
North of Belfast, at Portna on the River Bann, my regular fishing companion Sean and I saw more salmon one evening than I've ever laid eyes on in my life. When we arrived they were everywhere. They rolled, they leapt, they jumped all around us - and still we couldn't catch one. One leapt so close to us that it splashed us with the spray as it reentered the water. At that point, broken men, we retired to drown our sorrows in the local Guinness.
We had a similar experience in the seapool of the beautiful little River Bush (of Bushmills whiskey fame) near Antrim. Dozens of salmon were pouring in from the sea and going straight past us showing no interest whatsoever in our flies. We might as well have been two of those gnomes that sit on the side of garden fishponds.
Luckily, salmon abound in the rivers of Northern Ireland and we did catch a few. On the River Foyle system alone, the total rod catch per year is between 12,000 and 15,000 salmon and grilse. On the Finnit it is 8,000, on the Mourne 2,000 and on the River Drowse, which drains Lough Melvin, more than 1,000 fish were caught last year.
There are also some very large pike waiting to eat them - and some of the biggest whoppers you'll ever hear about these predatory fish! According to every Irishman you meet, there's a giant pike in every farm puddle. I heard of 'the pike that no line can hold' in Mullingar, the 'great fella that lives on blood and guts' below the abattoir outfall on the River Blackwater and the pike that 'eats swans whole and head first' on Lough Neagh.
Like the fishing in Northern Ireland, the food and accommodation are superb and you don't have to win my show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to enjoy it.
I have stayed in some absolutely magnificent, country house type hotels. On the last trip we based ourselves at The Manor House, Killadeas, right on the shores of Lough Erne. The fishing was great, the Guinness was good and the crack was mighty.
Tubs of maggots
By the end of that day, we had learned about not only the inevitable superiority of the female sex, but a potted history of fishing, from the thorn 'angles' of Stone Age man to the Treatyse Of Fysshynge With An Angle of 1486.
We heard why fly-fishing for salmon and trout had been for gentlemen, while coarse fishing for pike and roach was the preserve of the working classes.
We also learned how to choose tackle and tie it together, as well as how a trout feeds, breeds, thinks and sees.
But the most important thing was how to cast. We hadn't gone anywhere near water. We had, however, practised the overhead cast, the roll cast and even the two-handed cast over and over again on the grass.
'Tomorrow,' Michael said, 'we'll go to a stocked fishery. Frightfully boring, but necessary, to start casting on the water.'
Factory-bred fish are tipped into ponds, around which boys sit with their tubs of maggots or flies, hoping the fish will eventually bore themselves on to the hooks.
I spent the morning perfecting my casting to keep the female element ahead.
Periodically, Michael looked over and said: 'I can't think why you're not catching anything. You're doing brilliantly.'
Ben, on the other hand, was doing it all wrong. He was doing it so wrong he discarded his flies and put a worm on. And caught a fish immediately. No, I don't like stocked fisheries.
The third day we went real fishing. Coolyermer Fishery is also stocked (with the non-indigenous rainbow trout) but it is on a beautiful lough.
We rowed out into the middle, cast our rods, and it was sheer delight. Not least because I went out with Mark, a superb fisherman who was hauling them in all the time, then putting them back because they were big enough to feed only three or four.
Roving in the Republic
As memories of the Troubles fade, Londonderry's unique location is coming into its own. Only a few miles away is the border with the Republic of Ireland, once a time-consuming affair marked by checkpoints. Now there is no visible border at all, and only the Gaelic road signs (and cheap petrol) proclaim you've crossed into the Republic - but by then you're too engrossed by the scenery to care.
Here, County Donegal is a panoramic vista of silver lakes, green fields and rugged mountains. I headed off the main road to the Grianan of Aileach, a magnificent stone fort built circa 1700 BC. The perfectly preserved circular structure stood atop a hill like an apparition from the past. And there were no other visitors that morning.
Further west, the spectacular Atlantic Drive runs down to the ocean, dipping in and out of tiny bays and windswept coves.
But to see the best of this country you have to leave your car and walk. At Malin Head, the northernmost point in Ireland (though still in the Republic), the sun was going down in a smudge of pinks and yellows. The wind whipped in off the Atlantic, and the waves blew up rough and choppy. Two fishing boats bobbed back to the harbour, beating against the wind, and, as the last light faded over the dark cliffs, so the moon rose up above the ocean. A magnificent view.
Not much could follow that really. At McGrory's Guesthouse in nearby Culdaff, the rooms were warm and spacious; there was fresh seafood on the restaurant menu, and a coal fire glowing in the bar. Opened in 1924, the place is now run by Anne McGrory and her brothers, Neil and John.
Each Sunday, a music session starts, with John on guitar; Anne on vocals and Neil's wife Roisin on fiddle. Jigs, reels and Irish folk songs tumble forth, and the level of expertise would put many professionals to shame.
At closing time, Neil arrives with a special cocktail of Baileys and brandy, which, he claims, carries a 'knockout punch'. I speak from experience: there's no word of a lie in that, either.
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| | | | Stepping into the past
At the National Trust's Wellbrook Beetling Mill, in a glen on the Ballinderry river just west of Cookstown, I discovered how linen barons battered a fortune out of the flax plant. In this beautifully restored mill a water wheel powers a series of wooden hammers, which pummel linen made from flax for up to nine hours to produce the glimmering sheen of damask.
West of here things are seriously old. At the An Creagan visitor centre I borrowed a bike, pedalled past stone holiday cottages looking out over a sea of purple heather and went in search of some of the 44 prehistoric sites within five miles of here, in and around the Black Bog.
Powerful names they have - the Creggandevesky Court Tomb; the Aghascrebagh Standing Stone. I found the most enigmatic of all, a sort of knee-high multiple Stonehenge, on an empty hilltop. Quite alone in the drizzle, I tried to make sense of the Beaghmore Stone Circles, no fewer than seven separate stone rings, one of the most famous archaeological finds in Ireland.
I saw the standing stones again, but this time recreated in the open air Ulster History Park, which celebrates 10,000 years of human settlement in the province. The second of two excellent outdoor museums is the Ulster American Folk Park, which tells the epic story of how millions of Ulster men and women left for America. It features an entire emigrants' ship and ends with that purest symbol of contented US domesticity, the rocking chair on the balcony.
I spent three days wandering the Sperrins, tarrying at little burbling rivers, following forest trails, pausing for a drink in slumbering pubs and still had to miss out things on my list. I didn't touch Belfast, and went nowhere near the Giant's Causeway. Northern Ireland has enough unknown delights to keep the inquisitive visitor happy, and more to spare.
'What this place needs is three years of peace,' said Richard Mulholland. 'Then anything is possible.'
The crack of the Irish
There were a few surprises, too. I was pinned amiably against a wall in a bar in Newtownstewart by a man who spent 20 minutes talking to me, convinced that I was the Duke of Abercorn and, one evening in Coleraine, I met a completely potty university lecturer whose party piece was swallowing live goldfish and then bringing them up again into his beer glass.
We met 'the eel boys of the great Lough', who still make a living out of catching eels, selling them and eating them as their more or less staple diet all year round. They all live together in a rundown old stone cottage on an island and are out in their great wooden longboat in all weathers, winter and summer, their whole family economy dependent on eels.
One night, I took a closer look at what the father of the family was wearing and realised that his very strange-looking suit was made from eel skin, all dried and sewn together but with heads and eyes still attached. It was an interesting fashion statement, but I'm not quite sure what the hell it was saying!
I once spent a quite ridiculous week near Fermanagh making a celebrity fishing programme with Gareth Edwards, Billy Connolly and Frank Carson. The fishing, understandably, was not very good - partly because the conditions were cold and wet, but mainly because of the enormous amount of noise that Billy and Frank were making.
I have to say it was one of the funniest weeks of my life. At one stage Connolly was rolling around a field, littered with cow pats, crying with pain and laughter while Carson still insisted on trying to tell him yet more Irish jokes, with Billy screaming: 'No more, no more, for God's sake no more.'
At one point on the splendid coach that Ulster Television had provided we passed what was obviously a very lavish Irish wedding and, having partaken of rather too much Irish whiskey, we decided it would be great fun to join in the lineup for the photographs. So we quietly tagged ourselves on at the end of the line.
None of the family or friends spotted us, or took a blind bit of notice, but I'm sure there are somewhere a happy couple of newlyweds from Dungannon who got back from their honeymoon and, browsing through the photos of their big day, wondered what the hell Messrs Connolly, Carson and Tarrant were doing in the back row of their family lineup.
I've had great times in Northern Ireland and I know I shall have a lot more. The fishing can be terrific, the food and drink is magnificent and the people really couldn't be more friendly. In the words of the Irish themselves, 'Why don't you come on over?'
Fish Of The Month
He then let slip that if he hooked them and I hauled them in, they were technically my fish, which was bad news if you happened to be a fish.
I was not having any of this 'catch and release' nonsense with anything caught by me, technically or otherwise.
Every so often in the middle of the lough we passed Ben and Alex's fish-free boat.
Ben looked at our haul and realised he needed a spin with Mark before we finished for the day. I wasn't worried: I knew he was casting all wrong.
He immediately hooked a trout so large it won the Fish Of The Month competition. We ate fish all week. We fished by night and day, in rain and sun. We learned knots and flies, dry and wet.
I was sorry we didn't get into rivers or see salmon; even sorrier that we spent another day at the stocked fish ponds.
I also suspected Michael was more used to organising a long weekend for his beginners than a week. But he gave us a very good time. Best of all was the Irishness in his soul.
He knows all the poetry that matters, recites Yeats like a dream and tells a story like a stand-up comic.
Sitting in the middle of a lough, eating sandwiches and being told to tread softly for we tread upon his dreams - who needs to catch anything?
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Michael Shortt can be contacted on tel: 028 6638 8184.
For more information on holidays to Ireland, contact Tourism Ireland www.irelandholidays.co.uk tel: 0800 039 7000.
Flights to Belfast from Stansted with Go www.go-fly.com. Ferries: Stena Line www.stenaline.com tel: 08705 70 70 70.
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| | Destination Guide : Northern Ireland |
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| | | Shake off misconceptions |  | Why go on holiday to Northern Ireland?
Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, Northern Ireland has finally shrugged off its downbeat and politically volatile image to become a bona fide tourist destination with a beautiful landscape, friendly people and some fascinating cities.
Despite its troubled history, Belfast is now firmly established as one of Europe's coolest, most vibrant capitals, with its thriving nightlife and booming shopping facilities.
As well as being dotted with some of the most picture-perfect villages in the British Isles, it's also the perfect place to make the most of the great outdoors before joining the locals for some liquid refreshment.
How much does it cost?
B&Bs from £18 per person per night; hotels from £60 per person per night, rising to over £100 in Belfast.
Return air fares from London to Belfast cost can cost around £70 but there are often great deals with Ryanair and other budget carriers such as easyJet and flybe.
Consequently fares vary greatly and you should always check with the operator for exact prices.
A pint costs around £2, and an average meal for two is around £20.
How do I get there?
By air: flights to Belfast City Airport (15 mins from city centre) and to Belfast International Airport (35 mins from city centre — Airbus service available).
By sea: a number of ferry companies offer services from mainland Britain to Belfast including: Norse Merchant Ferries cross from Birkenhead (0870 6004321), and Stena Line crosses from Stranraer and Fleetwood (08705 707070). In addition, P&O cross from Cairnryan to Larne (0870 2424777) and Seacat crosses from Troon to Belfast (0870 5523523).
Ring for prices as they vary greatly and there are special tickets available seasonally.
By train: by train and ferry to Belfast Ferry Port, then on to Belfast Central which lies east of the city centre on East Bridge Street. Belfast Great Victoria Street is the most central station. There are bus and train links onwards from both stations.
By coach: there are Eurolines bus services from Great Britain to Belfast, with connections to the rest of Ireland.
When should I go?
The warmest weather is in July and August, bringing the crowds and making costs higher and accommodation harder to find. In winter the weather can be harsh and tourist facilities shut. Summer temperatures from 15-20C (58-68F), winter from 2-10C (35-50F).
If you visit in late October you'll catch the Belfast Festival, an arts festival to rival Edinburgh.
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| | | Walk the Giant's Causeway | | What should I do when I'm there?
Walking and cycling are great ways to experience the beauty of the Irish countryside. The Waymarked Ways are major paths found across the country, open to hikers of all abilities, and take in the famous Giant's Causeway on the Antrim coast.
Sea, game and coarse fishing are all excellent; try the Lower Bann for salmon (fly and spin-casting), or the Foyle, in County Tyrone, for trout. Horse riding is popular, and there are more than 80 golf courses.
Portrushon the northern coast is very popular for sea and sand holidays. Or check out the Ulster American Folk Park outside Omagh and the historic walled city of Derry.
What's Belfast like?
Grand architecture and social history meet at the Crown Liquor Saloon, which displays Victorian flamboyance at its most extravagant.
As much museum as pub, the Crown's exterior is covered in a million different tiles, while the interior is a mass of stained and cut glass, mosaics and mahogany furniture.
The Ulster Museum, located near the splendid campus of Queen's University, includes items from the wrecked Spanish Armada of 1588.
The Grand Opera House is now restored to its former glory, while the City Hall has a magnificent dome and whispering gallery. Stop at a few art galleries: there's a strong visual arts tradition in Belfast.
If you're interested in the history of The Troubles, Citybus run a coach tour around Belfast touring the pivotal locations of the struggles including the Falls Road spot where Gerry Adams "bumped into" Bill Clinton during the peace talk process.
Where else should I go?
Explore a few castles, from the military displays of Enniskillen to the fairy tale silhouette of Killyleagh.
Get to the roots of Irish culture by stopping in at a few churches: the fascinating medieval twin churches at Killevy; or the ruins and holy well at Cranfield, on the shores of Lough Neagh, a traditional site of pilgrimage.
Make a vow at the Hole Stone, an ancient Celtic standing stone with a circular hole, through which couples traditionally hold hands and pledge their love forever.
There are many other Bronze Age sites of interest; a wealth of medieval ruins; and plenty of rambling old country houses to admire.
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| | | Irish jigs | | Where's good for nightlife?
Traditional dancing music is performed on fiddle, tin whistle and pipes, and many villages will have a pub renowned for its music where you can show up and find a session in progress — maybe even join in.
Belfast has a good club scene and brilliant bars; head for the university area and eat out in the Laganside area along the river. Festivals are staged regularly throughout the region, celebrating everything from local arts to international literature.
What's the food like?
Traditional dishes include Irish stew and champ, which consists of creamed mash with scallions. Also try a legendary Ulster fry for breakfast.
There's fresh seafood here, and Irish breads and scones are great for tea. The Taste of Ulster initiative is promoting more innovative cooking, encouraging restaurants to update both traditional and foreign dishes using fresh, home-grown produce.
There are many award-winning restaurants, including Cayenne, owned by celebrity chef Paul Rankin, which offers New Irish cuisine — local produce with a fusion twist.
The most famous local brews are Caffrey's Irish Ale and Old Bushmills whiskey. And there's Irish spring water for those on the wagon.
What should I buy?
Tyrone Crystal, at Dungannon, makes Waterford-quality crystal at very reasonable prices, while Belleek in Fermanagh produces world-famous bone china.
Pick up a CD or two of local music and a couple of bottles of whiskey, and the folks back home will have nothing to complain about.
What is there for children to do?
Belfast Zoo on Antrim Road is always a good bet, especially as it has its own Children's Farm and a pool where kids can watch penguins and sea lions underwater.
At the Causeway School Museum, in County Antrim, they can play with yo-yos, marbles and skipping ropes in a 1920s classroom, complete with inkwells and leaky pens; the Museum of Childhood, in County Down, displays children's' toys, books and clothes.
Other must-sees include Exploris Aquarium in Portaferry; W5, an interactive discovery centre featuring more than 100 exhibits in the Odyssey complex; and Ark Farm in Newtownards where children can pet farmyard animals.
Animal-lovers should also visit the Tannaghmore Animal Farm and Museum, in County Armagh, where kids have the opportunity to see and touch the animals traditionally found on Irish farms at the turn of the century, many now rare and close to extinction.
Tourist office
Tourism Ireland, Nations House, 103 Wigmore Street, London W1U 1QS. Tel.0207 518 0800.
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| | Available rental properties in Northern Ireland |
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