Northern Ireland for a long weekend

The city has a centre you can walk, a river that built the Titanic, and a food scene that outgrew the old jokes a decade ago. Stay central. St George’s Market on a Friday or Saturday morning is the friendliest briefing you will get. The Titanic museum is genuinely good — industrial, not romantic — and worth the modern building.

Murals, peace walls and the neighbourhoods of the Falls and the Shankill are not a safari. Take a black-cab tour or a walking tour run by people from those communities if you want the recent history explained properly. Do not point a long lens at someone’s street for sport. The Troubles are within living memory. The politics are not finished.

The Giant’s Causeway is a real geological astonishment and a National Trust site that gets hammered by coaches between 11 and 3. Go early, or walk in from the cliff path so the stones are an ending. The rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede is a short thrill and a long queue in summer; the view does not require the bridge.

The Antrim coast road, the Glens, and a night in a smaller place — Cushendall, Bushmills, or over toward Derry if you have the extra day — beat a there-and-back from Belfast in the rain. Derry’s walls are among the best city walls in Ireland, and the city is a good place to hear two names for itself and not make a fuss.

Pounds, not euros, in Northern Ireland. Miles on the road signs. The dialling and the politics change if you cross into the Republic; many rental agreements let you, some insurance small print does not. Check before you aim a day at Donegal.

People are direct and often very funny. Match the energy. This is not a silent museum of conflict, and it is not a Game of Thrones set, though you will be offered both. Take the landscape. Take the history with a guide. Leave time for a fry and a walk.