What a trip looks like

There’s no set menu here. These are the five regions I build most trips around — usually two or three of them, never all five at once. The right mix depends on your dates, your pace, and your people.

● Adare, Co. Limerick

Adare Manor

Ireland’s grandest manor hotel, in a village people call the prettiest in the country — and home of the 2027 Ryder Cup. Guests of mine liked it so much they wrote their thank-you note on its paper.

● Cliffs of Moher, Co. Clare

The Wild Atlantic Way

Fifteen hundred miles of ocean road from Cork to Donegal. Most tours give you twenty minutes at the Cliffs of Moher; I’d rather you stand there at sunset when the coaches are gone.

● Gap of Dunloe, Co. Kerry

The Ring of Kerry

Everyone drives the Ring. Almost nobody gets out of the car at the Gap of Dunloe and goes through it the old way — by pony and trap, then by open boat across the three lakes to Killarney.

● Kylemore, Co. Galway

Connemara & Galway

Bog, granite, and forty shades of brown that turn out to be more beautiful than the green. Connemara is where Irish is still a living language on the street — my kind of country.

● Lahinch · Ballybunion · Doonbeg

Links Golf

Ireland has more true links courses than almost anywhere on earth, and Americans cross an ocean just to play them. Tell me the courses on your list and we’ll build the trip around tee times — not the other way round.

● Celtic Steps, Killarney

Music, Dance & Celtic Steps

A night of champion Irish dancing and live traditional music — Celtic Steps in Killarney is the show I send everyone to. And remember who’s bringing you: a two-time All-Ireland dancer who knows a good hard shoe when he hears one.

● Titanic Quarter, Belfast

Titanic Belfast

The world’s largest Titanic visitor experience stands on the very slipways where the ship was built. Nine galleries, the shipyard, the launch, the letters home — my guests come out quiet, and glad they went.