A long day, and worth it. Dublin to the Causeway is around three hours on the motorway; we usually go north directly and come back down the Antrim Coast Road, which is slower and much better.
The Causeway itself — forty thousand interlocking basalt columns, sixty million years old — takes about ninety minutes with the walk down and back. Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge is twenty minutes away and needs to be booked ahead in summer. The Dark Hedges at Ballymoney is a five-minute stop and a two-hundred-year-old beech avenue that Game of Thrones made famous.
Belfast can be added on the way back — the Titanic Quarter, or a black-taxi tour of the murals — but it makes a twelve-hour day into a thirteen-hour one. We will be straight with you about what fits.
Note that Northern Ireland uses pounds sterling, though cards work everywhere. There is no border check.
