How My Family Fell in Love With Ireland's Grand Hotels, Falconry, and the World's Best Bread and Butter

Travel + Leisure

15 hours ago

The older I get, the less shame I have. I'll think nothing of, say, falling asleep sitting upright on a bench at Dublin's National Botanic Garden, the day after an overnight flight from New York. (Jet lag, my old enemy, slayer of vacations.) 'Is it okay if we leave you here to nap for a while?' my husband, Caleb, asked. He and his mom, Suzanne, a lifelong gardener, had some herbaceous borders they wanted to investigate. Caleb and I are in our mid 50s; Suzanne is 79. She had flown to Dublin nonstop from Texas, but showed no signs of flagging.
For our first family vacation in years, Caleb and I wanted to take Suzanne to Ireland, a country we had visited before and loved. I put myself in charge of booking our accommodations, and picked splurgy hotels. I told myself that Suzanne, being older, would be gratified by the comforts of these high-end properties. But of course, when I fantasized about the trip, the person I imagined enjoying those thick mattresses, rainfall showerheads, and no-brakes breakfast buffets was me. From left: The entry hall of Dublin's Merrion hotel; the hotel's garden.
After arriving in Dublin, we checked in to the Merrion , which occupies four 18th-century town houses in the city center. ('One of the greats,' a travel-writing friend commented when I posted a photo of the hotel on Instagram.) Guest relations executive Alexandra Gingell, whom Suzanne immediately befriended, gave us a tour. I was especially eager to see the Merrion's famous art collection, a near-comprehensive survey of Irish painters. (The hotel even has an afternoon tea with pastries inspired by the works on the walls.) Gingell pointed out highlights, including the visionary landscapes of Jack B. Yeats, the poet's younger brother, and the semiabstract still lifes of William Scott, a favorite of mine. Over the next two days, Gingell would stop to chat with us whenever we passed through the lobby, making sure we had everything we needed and giving us recommendations; by the time we checked out, she and Suzanne were exchanging hugs.
Dublin is an inherently cozy city. Its Georgian streets look like they've stepped out of a Christmas movie, and the Merrion is similarly cosseting. But the hotel never feels stuffy or claustrophobic, thanks to a springlike palette and a garden courtyard that fills the guest rooms and public spaces with light. On our first night, the three of us met a Dubliner friend for dinner in the Garden Room , which overlooks the courtyard and its statue of James Joyce. The low ceilings, deep banquettes, and intimate acoustics made conversation easy for Suzanne, who has hearing loss. The gallery hall at Dromoland Castle.
'I love being taken care of,' she told Timothy, our waiter, as he offered her an extra cushion for her back.
'That's what I'm here for,' he replied.
After two nights in Dublin, we rented a car and drove southwest, to County Kerry. This was the rural Ireland I had longed to return to: green (it's a cliché to call Ireland green, but is there a word more accurate?), tranquil, seemingly populated only by sheep, who'll move out of the road at their own pace, thank you very much.
We pulled up to our hotel, just outside the town of Kenmare, at dusk. With its illuminated windows and pathways, Sheen Falls Lodge beckoned like a fairy-tale village. Caleb and I had a suite with French doors that opened onto a view of the namesake falls, where the river Sheen tumbles down layers of rock into Kenmare Bay. I stretched out on the sofa to read in front of the fireplace and within minutes had drifted off to the murmur of the water. The author, right, with his husband and mother-in-law.
Sheen Falls Lodge is only a few miles outside the Ring of Kerry, the 111-mile loop that traces the coastline of the relaveragh Peninsula. The Ring is so spectacularly scenic that in summer the road is backed up with tour buses. It was now September, and we were pleased to be missing the crowds. Still, we inched along. It took us most of a day to make it only a quarter of the way around. Was this the best vantage from which to see the lorn, majestic island Skellig Michael (otherwise known as the home of middle-aged Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi )? No, wait: the view was even better a few hundred feet down the road.
Happily, there were plenty of places to eat and take bathroom breaks along the way—the Lobster Bar & Restaurant in Waterville, we discovered, serves a terrific seafood pie. But by late afternoon, it became apparent to me that it's possible to max out on beauty. On Valentia Island, I let Caleb and Suzanne take in what must have been our 19th cliffside stop while I waited in the car. When we got back to Sheen Falls, not a little exhausted, the attentive Brian Richards, a member of the concierge team, thankfully offered to drive us into Kenmare for dinner so we could avoid any parking hassles.
It was a relief, the next day, when the three of us agreed not to do any sightseeing whatsoever, and to instead meld into our Sheen Falls surroundings and each pick an activity available on the property. Caleb and I spent the morning, a misty one, with resident falconer Liam Kerry, who introduced us to Archie, an African spotted eagle-owl, and Erin, a Harris's hawk. (No, I'm not really flinching in the photos of Erin landing on my glove, ready to rip into a piece of raw chicken, her enormous, muscular wings flapping a little too close for comfort. It just looks like I am.) Later, as Caleb did some bird-watching on the grounds, Suzanne hiked the property's winding trails, and I briefly splashed around the indoor pool before sinking into the Jacuzzi.
We ended our trip at Dromoland Castle , in County Clare, not far from Shannon Airport. As Jane O'Brien, the hotel historian, told us on a tour of the property, the land on which the castle stands belonged to the O'Brien family, which traces its lineage back to Brian Boru, Ireland's high king in the early 11th century. A first castle stood on the site as early as 1014; the one we were staying in dates from the early 1700s.
Caleb and I stayed in a two-story suite, where all the romance and grandeur of medieval life was intact: it occupied a turret, with a living room below and a bedroom above. There were also castle-y quirks, like the fact that the hallways twisted and turned so much I kept getting lost. Since I value my sleep, I avoided Googling the words 'Dromoland Castle ghosts.' I didn't want to know.
Horseback riding at Sheen Falls.
O'Brien showed us the property's walled Renaissance garden, ablaze with deep red and burnished yellow blooms well into fall. Even I, botanical-garden napper, was impressed.
'What do you think of Dromoland?' I asked Suzanne.
'It's a happy fantasy,' she said. As our tour ended, she ducked into the spa for a facial and emerged glowing. That night we put on our least rumpled clothes for a chandelier-lit meal at the hotel's restaurant Earl of Thomond. The food was inventive, and a little witty. My incredibly tender salmon came with a peeled zucchini; when I cut into it, I found that it had been hollowed out and filled with yet more salmon. (I confess that the food that eclipsed all others on this trip, in this and all the other restaurants we visited, was Irish bread and butter. Caleb and I are now Kerrygold converts.)
On our last day we headed an hour north, to a rocky region called the Burren, where limestone emerges from the ground in wavelike formations. At the Burren Perfumery, a homey complex of cottages seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we stocked up on souvenirs—naturally scented soaps and lotions with names like Atlantic Coast and Lost Garden—then decamped for lunch in its sunny tearooms. The menu is built around smoked mackerel, which is caught by a local fisherman and, I quickly discovered, puts all other smoked fish to shame. Soon our table overflowed with plates: more sweet brown soda bread and Irish butter, Irish cheeses, pickles, rhubarb salad. The simplest meal of our trip turned out to be the best.
Back at Dromoland Castle that night, we tried to decide which of our three hotels had been our favorite. It was a three-way tie: each had charmed us in its own way. Nine months later, Caleb was visiting Suzanne at her home in Fort Worth. She was eager to show him some new potted plants on her back patio. 'Those are the ones we saw in Dublin,' she said, pointing to three varieties of coleus. She had been inspired at the botanical garden—while I was sleeping.
A version of this story first appeared in the August 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline 'The Full Irish .'