This is the first of seven posts on the Selfish’s customized Game of Thrones tour. Check out the other posts here:

• The Selfish’s Very Own Game of Thrones Tour
• Day 1 in N. Ireland: The Haunted Forest, Winterfell, and the Twins
• Day 2 in N. Ireland: The Iron Islands, King’s Road, and the Red Woman
• Day 3 in N. Ireland: Dragonstone and Renly’s Camp
• Day 4 in Croatia: Crashing a Braavos Set and the Masters
• Day 5 in Croatia: Walking in Khaleesi’s footsteps in Meereen
• Day 6 in Croatia: From King’s Landing to Qarth to the House of the Undying

As we were still recovering from the triple jet lag we suffered as a result of our trip to Greece and Taiwan, Mr. Selfish asked me where I wanted to go next. After a brief moment of consideration, I said that we should do a Game of Thrones tour. I had recently become obsessed with the television series and had started reading the books. So just like that, it was settled.

The next step was to figure out where Game of Thrones was filmed. Some quick Googling revealed that GoT has been primarily filmed in Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Morocco, and Iceland.

The only place that we had previously visited was Morocco, so I decided to skip that location. It seems like you need to visit Iceland during the winter to get the GoT experience, and we were planning our trip in August, so Iceland was out too. That left N. Ireland, Malta, and Croatia.

Mr. Selfish looked at our points and decided that the best routing for us would be to N. Ireland and Croatia.

We rented a car in both N. Ireland and Croatia and embarked on our very own GoT tour. Although it was quite tiring (due to lots of driving and me being in the second trimester of my pregnancy), we had a great time.

Here was our itinerary in N. Ireland. We started in Dublin and then drove to Belfast, Portrush, Londonderry, and Donegal.

In the process, we explored the Haunted Forest, Winterfell, the King’s Road, Storm’s End, the Iron Islands, Dragonstone, and Dorne (which is in the next season of GoT). We mostly followed this map and this map but also found this blog to be quite helpful (especially for the filming of Dorne). It was quite easy to craft your GoT tour in N. Ireland, even the tourist information centers had GoT maps and brochures you could take with you. Other locations had photo ops and even placards designating it as a GoT filming location.

On the other hand, I found that Croatia was not nearly as commercialized for their GoT tours. We couldn’t find much information on GoT anywhere in Croatia other than on the web.

In Croatia, we started in Zadar.  Then, we went to Plitvice Lake National Park, Split, and Dubrovnik.

Most of the GoT locations were in or near Split and Dubrovnik and were Khaleesi (my favorite character) filming locations. I mostly used this website and the aforementioned blog for location information.

The exciting part about Croatia was that HBO was actually filming there during our trip. We managed to sneak onto a couple of sets that were being constructed and even came upon some left behind props. It’ll be fun to watch the next season of GoT and see if we can recognize some of the new sets that we happened upon.

The next six posts will go through our nerdy retracing of various GoT scenes. Be prepared for cheesy reenactment photos.