Power Is Power

I'll start this post with what may seem like a stupid statement: I'm not sure we end up in Croatia in 2023 without having watched HBO's series Game of Thrones.

It sounds stupid, right? Croatia is this picturesque, coastal country right on the Adriatic Sea with the most gorgeous crystal-clear blue-green waters and spectacular historic cities and we are there because we watched some television show. The food is incredible. The people are amazing. The weather is idyllic. The cost of living (or tourist life, I guess) is super affordable and we are there because of some fantasy show that broadcast altogether too few episodes over too long a period of time. 

It's true!

There are a lot of motivators behind our choice of travel destinations. Family. History. Culture. Food. Wildlife. Architecture. Spirituality. Connections with different types of people. Epic walks. The outdoors. I could go on and on and on. For Croatia, it was Game of Thrones. At least that's where it started.

Stupid. You can go ahead and think it. Or say it even.

Dubrovnik's Fort Lovrijenac.

Now to be fair here, 30 years ago Croatia was at war over its secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and nobody wants to go to a country either at war or recovering from a war and sometimes these thoughts stick. But 30 years ago is a long, long time and recovery and stability can occur within a span of time way shorter than that pretty quickly. Croatia was poised for success as a tourist magnet along the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Its coastline is no different than those of Greece and Italy and France and Spain. It just needed to separate from the rest of Yugoslavia to realize its full potential. Unfortunately, that took a war and an eventual recovery. 

Ultimately, it took Game of Thrones to turn our attention to Croatia. Good thing we watched Game of Thrones. Croatia was a revelation. 

I do think it's peculiar, by the way, that we visited not one, but two (Rwanda - which I did not blog about), countries this year that were involved in some sort of civil war or conflict with allegations of genocide in the 1990s. It's scary how quickly things can change. In the case of Croatia and Rwanda, things are much, much better than they were 30 years ago. But there are other places where the opposite is true.

View from Klis Fortress looking back down towards Split.

When we first started looking seriously at Croatia as a destination, we focused on the historic city of Dubrovnik, which was adapted in Game of Thrones into King's Landing, the capital city of Westeros. Our intent was to stop the Game of Thrones stuff there, quickly seek out some sights in and around Dubrovnik where some scenes were filmed and then enjoy the rest of Dubrovnik for what it is today: a city filled with history and culture and character. 

It became apparent pretty quickly that Dubrovnik wasn't going to keep us busy for more than a half a week. That would mean we'd need to find someplace else in Croatia to keep us occupied, either as a day trip or as a separate overnight stay. Eventually, we found Split, a city a couple of hundred kilometers up Croatia's coast which was founded with the construction of the retirement palace for the Roman Emperor Diocletian. And lo and behold, scenes in Game of Thrones were filmed in Split, too.

Split. Dubrovnik. It had to be Game of Thrones tour time. HAD to be! And yes, we took two GoT tours on this trip, one in Dubrovnik and one in Split. Never accuse us of doing anything halfway. See Vienna if you doubt me.

Dubrovnik at night, looking north from the steps outside St. Ignatius' Church.

So we've been here before. Northern Ireland. 2019. Call it our first Game of Thrones pilgrimage (I think Croatia will likely be our last...). We spent a day with one of the extras in the show tracking down random locations where the series was filmed that we never would have thought of going on our own. We committed to the mission. We wore cloaks. We answered trivia questions. We brandished swords. It was an awesome fun day out. 

That was not our Croatia experience. It wasn't better. It wasn't worse. It was just different. No cloaks. No swords. No random locations. In Northern Ireland, we went where we were taken. In Croatia, we used our GoT tours to get to some places we wanted to go which would have been difficult to get to on our own. Yes, we wanted to see spots where dragons breathed fire or where slave masters were killed or where plots were hatched, but we also wanted to get out of town in Split and Dubrovnik. Our Game of Thrones tours both did that for us.

When we started planning our Croatia jaunt, we found hotels right in the heart of (or just outside) the historic city centers of both places. In Split, that would put us right in the middle of what used to be Diocletian's Palace. In Dubrovnik, we'd be a five minute walk to the Pile Gate at the west side of the city. Couldn't get any better locations. We'd get a ride from the airport (in Split) or the ferry terminal (in Dubrovnik) and be close to most everything we wanted to see. No fuss, no how-do-we-get-to-the-city, no car, just a walk away.

And yes...MOST everything. We had a couple of other spots on our list in the Klis Fortress (outside Split) and the Trsteno Arboretum (outside Dubrovnik) that we wouldn't be able to get to unless we got a taxi and had the driver wait or we spent a lot of time on buses to more buses and then waiting for return buses. Lucky for us, Klis Fortress became the city of Meereen in GoT and the Trsteno Arboretum was the gardens of the palace at Kings Landing in the series. Let's just knock these both out by booking a GoT in each spot and there will be no public transportation logistics to coordinate and we'd get to see where some of our favorite scenes in the series were shot.

So that's what we did.

Our GoT guide in Split, Luka, showing us where the dragons were kept in Mereen.

For me on these two tours, the best places inside the cities that we visited were Fort Lovrijenac, the 11th century fort that sits just west of the city of Dubrovnik, and the substructures of Diocletian's Palace (which later became Split), built to both support the private quarters above for the former emperor and to keep food preserved as long as possible in a relatively cool environment. 

Fort Lovrijenac was built specifically to defend Dubrovnik from attacks either by land or sea from the west of the city. Walking around the Fort today, it is completely believable that in the event of an attack, you'd be safer in that place than anywhere else in the vicinity. It's is an absolute giant of a compound that seems impenetrable from all sides and is accessible from a single point that is easily defended. This place, combined with the thick wall that snakes all around the city itself, were the keystones to the defense of Dubrovnik. It does not take long to explore Fort Lovrijenac. You can definitely get the sense of what happened there pretty quickly. But the walk itself down to the place and back to the city is definitely worth the effort as well. We for sure got the best views of the entirety of Dubrovnik from the Fort.

In Split, the substructures of Diocletian's Palace were the only piece of the place we did not explore on our own (meaning without a GoT tour) but we could have. The underground spaces are so atmospheric. They have an authenticity about them that can only really come from places that are actually authentic. The feeling we got when we walked through the Iron Gate at the south wall of Split when we got to the city just kept happening again and again and again in the substructures. They are a fantastic achievement of engineering to be still standing as constructed a full 1,700 years plus after they were first constructed. 

Our Dubrovnik GoT guide, Daniela, showing us around the Red Keep.

So, of course, since we are on a Game of Thrones tour in both places, we are following a guide (Luka in Split; Daniela in Dubrovnik) holding a notebook with stills from the series to show us what the places looked like on television vs. how we see them today. I know...it's corny and a little stupid but there is something genuinely exciting about being somewhere that such an iconic television experience was created.

So...here goes some of the nerdy stuff.

The substructures of Diocletian's Palace were used to represent the dungeons or cellars (not sure which) of the city of Meereen, a city with three giant pyramids (added by CGI) with an economy built on and driven by slavery that was conquered by Daenerys Targaryen who subsequently freed the slaves held by the rich masters. Two of Daenerys' three dragons, after a couple of shall we say...unfortunate incidents with the third dragon, were confined to the cellars of the city. Or in real life, the substructures of Diocletian's Palace. And sure enough, we were clearly right there where Tyrion Lannister freed the two dragons from their restraints in Season 6, Episode 2. Obviously without the actual dragons, since you know...they don't exist.

According to Luka, they filmed more than 200 scenes in the substructures but used very few. I believe it. There's not a whole lot of footage of this place necessary.

Fort Lovrijenac was primarily used to represent the Red Keep in Kings Landing, the ultimate defensive inner sanctuary for the royal family, but there were so many more scenes filmed there. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is the "power is power" conversation between Petyr Baelish (a whorehouse owner who somehow has enough clout to be on the King's Small Council) and Queen Cersei Lannister (Season 2, Episode 1 if you must know). And sure enough, with a doubt, that conversation was had in the courtyard of Fort Lovrijenac, with any sort of Catholic iconography or baptismal fonts erased from reality. I'm not going to go so far as to claim that this is goosebumps type stuff (I'm not that into this) but I'll just say pretty cool to have been there.

In the streets of Mereen where the slave masters were killed. Uh...I mean...Split. Of course.

There are a whole lot of other spots in both Split and Dubrovnik where you can discover the actual places where Game of Thrones was filmed, from the alleys in Split where some of the slave masters were killed; to the dock outside of Dubrovnik where character after character after character set sail for wherever; to Cersei Lannister's walk of shame through the city of Kings Landing. This last one is probably the most famous and celebrated scene in the series for people to check out in Dubrovnik.

Two things about this last one. First, the producers of the series wanted to have this scene filmed at the side door of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary but the local leaders of the Catholic church wouldn't allow a scene with a naked woman to be filmed on their doorstep so they moved the location to the steps outside the Church of St. Ignatius. Second, there are a bar and restaurant at the bottom of the first set of steps where you can get all sorts of shame-themed dishes and drinks. We didn't try them so no endorsement coming on that one.

This series, by the way, seriously disrupted life (and tourism) in these two cities. Fort Lovrijenac was closed for an entire month during on sequence of filming and the entire city of Split inside Diocletian's Palace was closed while the series was being filmed there. Can you imagine showing up on vacation to either of these places and finding significant portions of both cities off limits? 

If you are wondering about loss of income for merchants and restaurants and hotels, apparently HBO covered their expected revenue and more. 

Shame burger or cocktail, anyone (top)? Checking out where Bron trained Jaime to fight left-handed (bottom).

But these GoT tours weren't about seeing stuff we could have walked to from our hotels, right? Let's talk Trsteno Arboretum and Klis Fortress.

For me, Trsteno Arboretum was a bit disappointing. Maybe it was because it was at the end of a long-ish tour or maybe it was because we were focused on the place as a setting for Game of Thrones, but I didn't get a whole lot out of this visit. The drive up the coast is gorgeous but ultimately, it's a garden without a whole lot to discover from my perspective. The plaza along the coast where Bron trained Jaime Lannister to fight left-handed (after his right hand was dispatched with a big knife) was the highlight for me.

But Klis Fortress was awesome.

Occupation of the piece of land where the current Klis Fortress stands dates back to before the time of Christ but construction of something resembling what we might see as a stone fort today dates from the ninth century. The current manifestation of the Fortress was built in the 18th century when that part of Croatia was under Venetian rule. The location of the Fortress is about as spectacular as you can get: it sits on an absolute sliver of a piece of rock high above the neighboring land. The walls behind walls of the Fortress are perched along a knife edge thin length of solid rock with sides of cliffs below the walls that are almost sheer vertical. 

It sits immediately above the town of Klis and has served as a refuge for the population of the town and Croatian rulers in that part of the country for centuries. It seems impenetrable but it has, at a few points in its history, been taken by an enemy, most notably by the Ottoman Empire in the year 1537 (it took the Croatians 111 years to re-take it from the Ottomans in what I assume was not a continuous effort).

I can't imagine how hopeless attacking this Fortress would have been. It's difficult work walking uphill in shorts, a t-shirt and my Skechers. I can't imagine assaulting the place in metal armor with a helmet and heavy weapons while the defenders repel you from above. The layers of defense are obvious and I am sure daunting to an attacking force. Get past the first walls and the defenders of the Fortress would just move back behind the second wall. Then past the third once that layer had been conquered.

There's not a whole lot of context to what you are walking past when you get to the Fortress itself so I was happy to have Luka with us to tell us about the history of the place and guide us all the way to the top of the hill while stopping here and there to tell us some Game of Thrones anecdotes. The top is definitely the highlight. There's a small church (shown below) up there that was a converted mosque built by the Ottomans upon the ruins of the original church that they destroyed when they conquered Klis in 1537.

Of all the places we traveled to see filming locations on our two GoT tours, I understood why they traveled all the way to Klis the least. It seems like such an effort to get a cast and crew and extras up to this place to film pieces of scenes using bits and pieces of this Fortress. Sure, it's an incredible location but the stills that Luka showed us made me wonder if they really couldn't have done these scenes in a studio somewhere. I mean, Meereen looks really nothing like Klis. Meereen is a gigantic place and Klis is decidedly not gigantic. It's actually pretty tiny. I can't imagine housing an army in that place for any length of time. 

Although I guess if faced with a choice of being somewhere altogether too small for comfort and being indiscriminately slaughtered by an invading army, I'm headed to Klis at the first opportunity.

We got about an hour at Klis Fortress. I'm sure it was not enough to get into everything there was to see at the place but I think we saw enough. We walked through the whole entrance sequence, visited the small museum of an armory on the property and visited the cell where prisoners were held (I can't imagine how cold that stone cell on top of that cliff was at night...) in addition to seeing the super spartan church at the top of the Fortress. We also got one surprise in the parking lot, an exposed vertical face of textured rock that seemed to go on and on for a while and served as graphic inspiration for the wall at the north of the north in Game of Thrones.

Standing where HBO actors stood (top) and the inspiration for a certain wall (bottom), Klis Fortress.

I don't know how exactly we would have made it out to Klis without signing up for a Game of Thrones tour. My hunch is we would have deemed it either too much trouble or too expensive to worry about and would have found something else to do in Split. And that would have been too bad, I think. I consider Klis an essential part of our Croatia memories and we wouldn't have done this in all likelihood without of GoT tour. It's a pretty amazing site even if it doesn't take a whole lot of time to walk the entire place. They apparently have evening dramatic performances up there in the summer. There's a small stage with about maybe 50 or 60 seats set up. I bet the view at night is spectacular.

Before I close blogging about Game of Thrones (probably forever...) there are a couple of other spots in and around Split or Dubrovnik to get your fantasy fix. 

There's a small Game of Thrones museum in Split which is all of four rooms big and is probably not worth the €14.50 we paid for admission. It's mostly filled with props (some of which, like an authentic shutter used to cover modern windows, are very underwhelming) and dioramas and costumes and maybe one or two Funko Pops. Enter at your own risk. We're not sorry we went but I also feel we could have skipped easily.

There's also a Game of Thrones exhibit on the island of Lokrum off the coast of Dubrovnik. The place was used as the setting for the city of Qarth and it's about a 10 or 15 minute boat ride from the old Dubrovnik harbor on the east side of the city. Lokrum is worth the trip regardless of any sort of GoT attraction. There are hiking trails and insane amount of peacocks over there. There's also a replica of the Iron Throne. And who can resist getting a picture taken when faced with a replica of that thing.

That's enough Game of Thrones stuff for this trip. Valar Morghulis. 

Thanks to Elite Travel for getting us to all these places.

Vacation Of Thrones

Yeah...I know the title of this post is stupid. It's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. It will make sense later on, I promise. Or at least I hope. 

On Sunday April 17, 2011 at probably just before 9 p.m., I turned on HBO in my place on North Glebe Road in Arlington, Virginia and watched the first ever episode of Game of Thrones. At that point in time fresh off The Sopranos and Deadwood (still the best HBO series ever!) I would have watched any original content on that channel and Game Of Thrones interested me enough after episode one to tune in the next week. Although honestly, I was a little skeptical. 

I warmed to it in a serious way. And for about 72 of the next 422 weeks, I made sure Sunday nights were locked onto that same cable channel wherever I was in the world, be it at home or on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska or wherever else I was that I could tune in and watch the latest episode live. You might say I was obsessed. Although I'd probably call it dedicated. 

For the first few seasons, I associated Game of Thrones with many different locales that actually exist in our real world. Iceland. Spain. Morocco. Croatia. Malta. But as the seasons wore on and the show reached its conclusion, I started to understand more and more of the show was shot in Northern Ireland, whether it be on sound stages in Belfast or in the countryside around that same city. So in a week in Ireland and Northern Ireland, I was bound to come into contact with something from the show, right? 

I made sure of it. We spent a total of four days in and around Belfast. In three of those four days, we took in plenty of Game of Thrones sights, which have become a significant tourist industry in that part of the United Kingdom. Turns out I'm not the only one out there dedicated. Or obsessed. Pick one if you want; either way you'd be close enough.

The Dark Hedges, also known as the King's Road.

Before I get too far with this post, it does seem odd to me, considering all the amazing places I've been over the past six plus years, that I would travel to see some sites celebrating a television show. I mean a little more than ten years ago, this kind of thing wouldn't have been possible because the show didn't even exist. On the surface, it seems inauthentic in a way. It might even seem like some of the places we visited to get our GOT fix are completely artificial or inconsequential. I'll take all of that if you want to throw it at me. We had fun doing this so I'm writing about it.

Belfast is Game of Thrones central. No pilgrimage (am I really ready to call what I did a pilgrimage?) of this sort could skip the capital city of Northern Ireland. We started our journey there on our very first day after crossing into the United Kingdom on the recently installed Glass of Thrones trail. You thought the title of this post was stupid...just wait. 

Glass of Thrones, I say? I do! The final season of this exalted series featured just six episodes. On the air date of each of those last six, one giant stained glass window was unveiled at six different locations around Belfast by Tourism Ireland. All six together formed a sequence from City Hall over the River Farset to all the way north of Titanic Belfast.  About a mile and a half or maybe a bit more overall in length. They are still there. Instant tourist attraction!! And of course, we had to do all six, one for each of the four central houses in the show (Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Targaryen) plus another for the white walkers and one final one for the Iron Throne.

Glass of Thrones number five: White Walkers. With Titanic Belfast in the background.

Each of the first four windows features scenes from the history of each principal house. There are plenty of happy memories along with some gruesome stuff in pretty much each one, although there's probably more of the latter than the former. Want to re-live the glory of the North? House Stark's display shows Jon Snow cutting down Boltons with Longclaw in the battle of the bastards (that's a happy memory) offset by the death of Robb, Talisa and Catelyn in the red wedding at the Twins. If you are a Lannister, Baratheon or Targaryen fan you might have to dig a little deeper for the joy in these things. 

Make it to the fifth Glass and you'll find Hodor holding the door against the onslaught of wights fighting to get to Brandon Stark, freshly anointed as the brand new three-eyed raven. If there's a more poignant character in the entire series than Hodor, I don't know who it is. That part of the story brings me closer to tears than any other plot line in any of the eight seasons.

Keep going to the end of the trail and you'll find the Iron Throne waiting for you. Or at least a tractor seat in front of the stained glass depiction of the Iron Throne. It's an inventive touch to add this seat in front of the last backdrop. Plus, after a mile and a half or so, a place to sit is welcomed, especially if it's been raining most of the way along your journey (like it was for ours!). Glass of Thrones done.

Clockwise from top left: Jon Snow, Tyrion with crossbow, poor Hodor and Dany with the baby dragons.

So Glass of Thrones sucked people (or at least us) into Belfast, right? Want more manufactured tourist attractions to get people to Northern Ireland? Try Door of Thrones. I told you it would get stupid-er. But if you decide to do the entire Door of Thrones circuit, be prepared to travel a lot further because they are spread around the entirety of Northern Ireland.

Not familiar with Door of Thrones? I'm not surprised. Turns out that during the filming of the series, some of the trees that flank the King's Road were felled in a storm. Yes, the King's Road is real although it's called the Dark Hedges in real life. We visited that site on the way up to the Giant's Causeway on our second day in Northern Ireland.

Anyway, rather than just cut the downed beeches up for firewood, HBO bought the trees and had doors made out of them, complete with bas reliefs of scenes from the show's history. There are a total of ten of these things. Together, they constitute the Door of Thrones set. And you'll have to travel far and wide to see them all. We found two: one at the Fullerton Arms pub in Ballycastle and one at The Cuan (pronounced queue-ann) pub in Strangford. 

The Cuan owns door number one, which shows a map of Westeros, and the Fullerton Arms owns door number six, which shows a dragon (presumably Drogon, the biggest of the three). During a stop for lunch, we managed to talk to one of the owners of The Cuan about how they acquired their door. It was apparently offered to them as a gift of thanks for housing most of the stars of House Stark along with Lena Headey during the filming of the Winterfell scenes in the early seasons of the series. I imagine the Fullerton Arms might have a similar story (if we had been allowed to stay long enough to ask them) since that pub is near Ballintoy where some of the scenes of the Iron Islands were filmed.

I think this is a pretty cool gesture from the network. If nothing else it perpetuates a constant trail of geeks like me (and worse!) visiting the places that supported the show during filming. We stopped our Door of Thrones visits at two, although we could have easily hit the one in a Belfast coffee shop if we had wanted. Two was enough I think.

The Cuan's Door of Thrones No. 1.

Detail from Door of Thrones No. 6 at the Fullerton Arms, showing Drogon.

So visiting stained glass windows and carved doors is all well and good but there has to be something more fun and real, right? You bet! Want to see the King's Road? Hit up the Dark Hedges (like we did) on the way up to Bushmill's Distillery or the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge or the Giant's Causeway or just a special stop just to see the trees. Want to see where scenes from the first season were filmed right in the historic Irish countryside? Call or email or just sign up for a tour from Game of Thrones Tours.

What's so special about Game of Thrones Tours? Well, if you are a fan of the show, pretty much everything. They offer a series of tours out of Belfast, Dublin or Derry which really amount to two different itineraries. The first is a trip to the north coast of Northern Ireland to see filming locations for the Iron Islands along with the Giant's Causeway (which is NOT in Game of Thrones). The second is a trip south of Belfast to visit Winterfell (yes THE Winterfell) and some other locations in the North associated with House Stark. After all, House Stark is hands down the best house in the series.

There's one more twist to Game of Thrones Tours' agenda: your tour will be led by someone who was actually in the show. No, you won't get Peter Dinklage or Kit Harrington or Emilia Clarke sitting at the front of your bus playing DVDs and providing their personal narrative of their experiences on the show. You won't even get Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) or Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) or someone like that. All those people I'm sure are either looking for their next gig or spending time on the Comic-Con tour circuit. 

Think "extras".

Castle Audley, otherwise known as one half of the Twins.

Let me introduce you to our guide for the day: Robbie. Robbie's claim to Game of Thrones fame is as an archer for Stannis Baratheon in the Battle of the Blackwater (season two, episode nine, if you must know). If there's a tour guide out there more suited to and enthusiastic about his role in the tourism industry than Robbie is, I don't know who they are or who they work for. This guy was fantastic. He was so completely into the series and the tour he was leading and that commitment was just awesome. Get on Robbie's tour and just wait until he gets to the spot where Tyrion and Jon Snow camped on their way to The Wall. 

Just a bit more about Robbie (indulge me, OK?). He got involved in the show because HBO was looking for trained archers to be part of the cast and he was in a local archery club. Now, realistically speaking, HBO could have faked this, right? I mean it's not like we as viewers would pick up on the fact that trained archers were in the episodes, right? They could have just CGI-ed it or shot it in a way that showed arrows in the sky shot by off camera personnel. But they insisted on using extras that knew how to handle a bow and arrow.

Robbie first attended a casting call for applicants that he figured would be attended by 20 or 30 people (there were hundreds). He passed that audition but only if he spent the next four months growing out his hair and beard (he's working retail at this point but does what the network asks). Four months later (and with a full beard and long hair), he's back shooting arrows at a target for HBO. No accuracy, no part in the show. Fortunately, Robbie's not just in the archery club, he's the coach. He passes and makes it into the show.

For me this narrative is useful for two reasons. First, it shows the lengths that HBO went to get the details right in this series (let's ignore the water bottle and coffee cup in the last season, shall we?). They didn't have to have trained archers in the Battle of the Blackwater but they did anyway. Second, I think it's awesome that Robbie's life was changed completely by chance. He happened to have an interest in archery that translated into an entire new career path based on a television show. How cool is that?

Me. Cloak. Long claw. No glasses in Game of Thrones. Oh well...

The sunny morning and afternoon we spent with Robbie (the only sunny day we saw in Ireland) took us to Winterfell, the Twins, all the way north of The Wall and to the hall where the banner men of House Stark declared their allegiance to the King in the North, Robb Stark. Or in our world, we went to Castle Ward, Tollymore Forest Park and Inch Abbey. You can visit all these places on your own. But I doubt you will get the insight and have as much fun as you would if you joined Game of Thrones Tours for the day. And I really do mean a day. Like 8:30 a.m. to 5ish p.m. This is not a short trip.

Of course when you get to the places where the show was filmed, you don't necessarily see the same structures and scenes you see in the show. Yes, the season one courtyard scenes at Winterfell were shot in the courtyard of Castle Ward but there's only one tower at Castle Ward vs. two at Winterfell and the balconies where Ned and Catelyn Stark watched Bran struggle with bow and arrow target practice are not there at all. The reasons for this are simple: the second tower was added by computer and the balconies were added for the show and then disassembled. After all, Castle Ward is an historic site and legit tourist attraction not related to Game of Thrones. They can't just leave something added by a television network.

I have to say it was a little disappointing. I wanted to see Winterfell and just assumed that Castle Ward would way more resemble the Stark home than it actually did. One of the reasons I assume this was that Winterfell was in play in every season. Heck, the Night King led a siege on Winterfell in season eight. But Robbie pointed out that when Theon Greyjoy captured Winterfell, he set fire to the place. And you can't very well set Castle Ward on fire, now can you? 

HBO's solution to this dilemma was to build a full size replica of Winterfell elsewhere in Northern Ireland. Most scenes in Winterfell after the first or second season were therefore filmed on the fake Winterfell (or is it the real one?) built especially for the show. That location is off limits. For now. It's allegedly being fixed up a little and may be open for tourists as early as next year.

Robbie showing us the magic of television. Comparing real life Castle Ward to fictional Winterfell...

and elsewhere on the property at the hanging tree where Brienne of Tarth got into it with some Stark soldiers.

The other thing that struck me about some of the places we visited that day were how briefly the spots we stood that day actually appeared in the show. We stopped at a couple of points both at Castle Ward and later at Tollymore Forest Park where scenes less than 15 seconds or so in duration were filmed. I felt a little foolish being with a group of 30 or so people watching a clip of Tyrion Lannister and Bronn walking in the woods and talking for less than 20 seconds. We came all this way to see where less than 20 seconds of film were shot??? All told, outside of Castle Ward / Winterfell itself our contact with show locations in all eight plus hours we were on the road totaled probably way less than 30 minutes.

However, I will admit there was a thrill when Robbie took us to the hanging tree, the spot where Brienne of Tarth and Jamie Lannister stumble across some House Stark men who have just hanged three women for cavorting with Lannister soldiers. This was clearly a recognizable unadulterated spot where a scene in the show happened. Pretty cool. Even if it was less than 30 seconds. Brienne killed all the Stark soldiers by the way.

I also loved the spot where the Starks found the direwolf pups is the very first episode. Not because that scene was especially important to me personally (although I guess one could argue that was an event that affected the entire rest of the series) but because there's a wooden bridge that the Stark children walk over to get to the dead direwolf mother that isn't there. HBO built the wooden bridge that they cross for the episode and then removed it. The bridge appears in exactly 24 seconds of the episode. Had to have that bridge!!!

Our fearless leader Robbie showing us where the dire wolf pups were found...

and proving to us that he was actually in the show.

The highlight of the day, though, was our visit to Inch Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery first built in the late 12th century, where the lords of the North declared Robb Stark as King in the North. Was it the historic importance of the Abbey or the character of the Norman architecture that made this place special? No it was not. It was that we got to dress up in cloaks and play with swords. Yes, the highlight of my day in Northern Ireland was dressing up and playing soldier. And yes, I'm 51 years old!!!!

Did you know there's a procedure for donning a cloak? I figured it was just slung over your shoulders and tied in front of the neck, although after wearing an actual cloak I could see that method of wearing one of these garments being a strangulation hazard. Take the long part of the strap, pass it around your body and then fasten it to the buckled end of the short part of the strap. How people moved quickly with these things on is beyond me, let alone fight with swords. It was warm, though. Which I guess is part of the point.

Cloak on, sword in hand, our entire party (some with Stark banners) made the short walk to the Abbey itself for a group and individual photo ops. Crazy stuff that this is how I spent an afternoon on my vacation. It was completely silly and tons of fun. Add this to the list of things that I never thought I'd do on my travels around the world. I can't imagine what the legitimate tourists visiting the Abbey that we passed on our way thought was going on.

The promenade to Inch Abbey.

Nothing like dressing up and playing with swords on vacation.

If it seems from everything I've covered in this post like there's a whole industry of tourism that has developed over the last five or ten years in Ireland just related to Game of Thrones, you'd be right. There is. I asked Robbie how many days a week he brings people to Winterfell and his response was that it's his full time job. I figured this was a side gig. It's not. For him, it's his career. I'm jealous in a way.

It's also clear from visiting the Dark Hedges first thing in the morning and not being the first ones there, and being turned away from the lunch serving at the Fullerton Arms because there were too many Game of Thrones tour buses with standing reservations that this show has affected the economy of Northern Ireland and the lives of those involved in catering to nerds like me in immeasurable ways. I wrote earlier in this post that this sort of tourist attraction seems manufactured and inauthentic. It certainly isn't to those living it and making money from it every day. If you are in any way a fan of the show and are visiting Belfast, I'd definitely recommend signing up for one of these tours and embracing everything it can be.

All told, we probably spent about two whole days tracking down Game of Thrones related stuff in Northern Ireland. We could have done way more if we'd wanted to. If we had visited a year later, we would have done more. Next year (in addition to the aforementioned actually replica of Winterfell), HBO is launching the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Belfast. We definitely would have done that.

While it's a little unlucky that we missed the Studio Tour and Winterfell by visiting this year, we did have a little GOT-related luck on this trip. There is a touring exhibition of artifacts from the show that's making its way around the world (or at least Europe). It's already been to Barcelona, Paris, Oberhausen and is currently (as of the date of this post) en route to Madrid for a late October opening. Between Oberhausen and Madrid, it was in Belfast and was scheduled to wrap up on September 1, two days before we were scheduled to arrive in Belfast. Bad luck again, it would seem. 

Dragon skull from Game of Throne: The Touring Exhibition.

But then in August, it was announced that the exhibit would be extended for one more week. What luck! Perfect for us! Want to see props like dragon skulls, statues from the crypt in Winterfell and actual swords and clothing used in the show? Go find this exhibit. While it's probably not worth making a special trip all the way to Madrid to see this stuff, if you are there and you are a fan, I'd recommend paying what might seem like an ungodly amount of money to spend a couple of hours at this thing. We did. I'd say it was worth it and provided us with just one more way we managed to make this a true pilgrimage. There I go again with the whole pilgrimage thing.

I often take trips that look at a single subject from a number of different viewpoints. We visited several different Gaudí buildings in Barcelona in 2014 and took in what seemed like innumerable temples and shrines in Japan three years after that. These types of explorations allow me to get more than one take on a single subject and add up to a richer examination of something important to me. I just never thought I'd do it for a television show. Totally worth it though.

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How We Did It

There's a lot to unpack here. 

You can find each of the six Glass of Thrones windows by opening up Google Maps and typing "glass of thrones belfast". Each of the six windows will appear on the map stretching from Belfast City Hall to north of Titanic Belfast. Simple, right? Alternately, you can find information about all six along with a map on the visitBelfast.com tourist page. The link is here. 

If you want a comprehensive page for all things Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland, try the Discover Northern Ireland website. They have a whole page devoted to tours and sights related to the show. You'll find (once again) information about Glass of Thrones as well as all ten Door of Thrones locations and beyond. Of course, they've developed an app showing you how to get to about every publicly accessible filming spot. 

If you want more information about the Fullerton Arms or The Cuan where we saw Door of Thrones Nos. 1 and 6, check out their websites. Click the name of each in the previous sentence to access each pub's website. If you go to the Fullerton Arms on your own, make a reservation or be prepared to be turned away. We were. There were two tour buses already parked out front when we got there at a little after 1 p.m. and we saw another pulling in as we departed with empty stomachs. You will likely not have the same issue at The Cuan.

If you want to visit the King's Road on your own (as we did), search for the Dark Hedges on Google Maps to find the location but don't actually drive to that spot. The actual road with the trees is closed to traffic and there's no space to park right outside. Instead, drive to the The Hedges Hotel just about a quarter mile from the King's Road itself and park there and walk. It's OK to do this. They encourage it. There's also a Dark Hedges Experience which involves guided tours in the day and night times. We didn't do this but it departs from the Dark Hedges Estate just a little further down the road from The Hedges Hotel. The webpage for the Experience is here. 

Finally, I'd very much encourage you to book a tour with Game of Thrones Tours. Their Winterfell Tour departs from the Jurys Inn in Belfast's city centre at 8:30 a.m. They do not operate daily so check the schedule of available tours on their website. I've covered some but not all of the locations where they will take you. While you could try to patch it together yourself, I'd recommend you book with them and let them do all the hard work. Besides, if you do it yourself, you won't meet any direwolves on the tour. We met Summer and Greywind!

Whatever you do in Northern Ireland related to Game of Thrones, I hope you have as much fun as we did. Valar Morghulis!

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