European Adventure 2025 | Hillsborough + Belfast, Ireland | GCP by Nicole
We were so excited to set off for Northern Ireland to visit with our friends again!
It was a nice, short flight over to Dublin from Venice. We loaded up our rental car and made our way up to Hillsborough to stay a few days with our friend, Gillian. We spent the evening catching up and then going for a “wee” walk through Royal Hillsborough. We had just missed seeing the King and Queen. Their second home is a beautiful castle that is practically in Gillian’s backyard. The flags were down when we walked around that way, which means they had already headed back to Buckingham Palace. It is such a beautiful town to walk through rich in so much history. And Gillian is the best tour guide to have around because she knows about all of the facts and history!
The King of England’s Home
The next day we headed out to meet our other friends and went on a hike of Cavehill. It was a pretty steep hike, but so worth it for the views at the top! It looks down over Belfast and you can see the whole city from there.
We then split up to head down to Belfast Castle to meet another old friend for lunch. We had never visited Belfast Castle yet in our travels over there so that was a real treat to see.
The grounds are so beautiful and the restaurant inside was so good! After lunch we decided to work it off by going on another hike, this time up the other side of Cavehill. Belfast Castle is right at the base of it so we just had to cross the parking lot to start hiking up and it was a completely different hike. This hike led us more through the woods, and brought us to a different viewpoint that still looked over the city.
We then left there to meet up with everyone again at Belfast Zoo. And the kids finally all got to see each other again since they weren’t on the morning hike. It was the best reunion! Belfast Zoo is definitely smaller than Dublin Zoo, but still plenty to see.
After a delicious dinner we the boys and girls split up. The boys headed off go karting and little Miss Eva started horse back riding the other year so she invited Caleigh to take a lesson with her. Everyone had the best time!
