Northern Ireland Home Base

Will you have a car or will you be relying on public transportation?

We loved our stay at Glass Island in Ballycastle in 2016. Wonderful location for day trips (car essential), lovely accommodations, warm friendly hosts and fabulous breakfasts. Highly recommend.

We visited Ireland a few years ago and spent 5 days in Northern Ireland. We stayed at the Bushmill's Inn Hotel (https://bushmillsinn.com/ ) in Bushmills. This was a perfect location; the hotel was awesome and you are so close to the main attractions of Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, Bushmills Distillery, the Dark Hedges, Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge as well as Portrush Golf Club (site of The Open Championship in past years). The Causeway Coastal Route is so scenic and you can hit pretty much every desired stop using Bushmills as your home base. Good luck! Northern Ireland is magical.

I agree with Bushmills. We stayed in an AirBnB at the edge of the village. We did a day trip to Derry, as well. We were only there three days, though. With a week, you could get into Donegal as well, in which case Derry could work. All of this assumes you have a car. If that's the case, check out the Sperrins AONB and the Ulster American Folk Park near Omagh.

It depends which part of NI you're most interested in seeing, tho to be honest most of it is day trip distance. I agree with the suggestion of Ballycastle/Bushmills if you're planning to visit the Causeway Coast. If you're more interested in the Mournes, there's Newcastle, and if you're more interested in Lough Erne area, Enniskillen.

As Cat VH says, a lot depends on what parts of Northern Ireland you are wanting to see. We chose the area around Ballymena (not the most interesting of towns, although as we were only using that as a base to sleep in, that didn't really worry us), as we felt that was central and would serve as a base to see all of Northern Ireland. It gave quick and easy access to the Antrim Glens, Causeway coast, Sperrins and also Strangford Lough area.

Bushmills area is good if you are wanting to soend ll your time in the north, but if you want to see anything of the Mountains of Mourne or the Ards Peninsula, then you are looking at 2+ hours drive just to get there (plus another 2+ hours back).

My apologies !
I should have mentioned that I will have a car rental.

Thanks!
Maureen

In 2015 we went to Northern Ireland, taking the train from Dublin to Belfast, spending half a day in Belfast, then the train to Derry. We were three nights in Derry, using it as base to explore Donegal. Then train back to Belfast, another half day there, and returned to Dublin.