Every March, as St. Patrick’s Day approaches and Yeats and stout and the Undertones and other Irish matters are on my mind, I recall a conversation I often have. A friend is about to go to Ireland for the first time and asks me for recommendations. Inevitably, the first thing I say is: ‘‘Don’t skip the North.’’

This advice is usually met with skepticism. Memories of news about Northern Ireland during the Troubles — the 30-year period of conflict during which violence frequently flared up — still linger long after the Good Friday agreement of 1998, and many people remain wary of visiting. That’s a real shame, because Northern Ireland is home to some of that green island’s most spectacular scenery, and its capital, Belfast, is among my all-time-favorite drinking cities.

Belfast is compact and brimming with distinctive bars full of character, particularly in the Cathedral Quarter, an arty district with St. Anne’s Cathedral at its heart. On a business trip in 2010, I was staying in the Quarter at the elegant Merchant Hotel, mostly because I had heard great things about its cocktail bar. I knew nothing about the Spaniard, a bar across the street from the Merchant, but decided to check it out. Appealingly cozy and dark, with most of its surfaces taken up by pictures and knickknacks, it felt like the sort of place where an unusually well-mannered pirate might make himself at home. I arrived with a sore throat, for which the quick-thinking barman prescribed an excellent hot whiskey (I later discovered the bar’s winning way with rum cocktails). A local woman — an off-duty constable — struck up a conversation. I mentioned that I was a writer, and she insisted that I next join her and her friends at the John Hewitt, a bar named for a Belfast poet and activist.

When we got there, a folk trio was playing, and playing well. A fire burned in a small hearth. I drank a pint of rich porter from a local brewery and was swept up in convivial chatter by everyone around me. Reading the fine print on the menu, I learned that the bar is operated by the Belfast Unemployed Resource Center and that its profits benefit the organization. I thought it was an ingenious model, and I knew the Hewitt would become a bar I’d return to on every trip to Belfast.