Of all the money that e'er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm I've ever done
Alas it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To mem'ry now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all
-The Parting Glass

The following pictures are from a trip I took with my dad in September 2026. No set of pictures can completely sum up a trip, but I have selected ten that provide brief ways to talk about a very special trip with Renee. These are not necessarily the ten best photos I took—in fact they most certainly are not. But I did get a new camera for the trip and that was fun in its own to explore with that. If I can think of an economical way to share the 100 or so I parsed out to find these ten on the site, I will.

Equipment: Nikon D3500 with 18-105mm lens; iPhone 15 Pro

1.

First, my travel buddy, pictured here at Trinity College in Dublin. Renee and I have talked about an Ireland trip for years and years. Surprising I know, but with a name like Connor McLaughlin, my paternal side has some Irish heritage. My Gigi, Renee’s mom and a person I have written about elsewhere on this site, was very into genealogy and Irish heritage, despite not being so herself. She loved her Irish Billy and had traced him back through Lucan Ontario to County Tipperary (Renee-William-Francis-William-William-Martin, born in Ireland). So finally in 2025 we decided that next year was it. Her birthday is September 21 and its a good time for her sheep farming, so we found a gap in my trial schedule (or so I thought, haha) and did a jaunt in Ireland September 17-26, 2026. We left on Thursday night from Detroit to land in Dublin Friday morning.

2.

We were three days in Dublin, with the first day being essentially a “bearings” day recovering from a transatlantic flight and making smoothing out practicalities like sleep, time change, cell phones, and credit cards. Highlights during this Dublin period were The Little Museum of Dublin (stay ‘til the end of this post for a picture from an exhibit), going in Christ Church Cathedral, service in St. Patrick’s (both Church of Ireland, not Catholic), and Trinity College with the Book of Kells and Long Library. But an overall highlight was just walking the town. The sights were close together and we walked everywhere. No car and no public transit needed except coming in and leaving. This is Grafton St. pictured, home of shopping, some tourists, and lots of pubs, which aptly describes the southside of the Liffey. One of my best meals of the trip was mussels and a Guinness on our first full Dublin day.

3.

The Home Country. As I said, some of my people came from Ireland and my Gigi traced them back to Martin McLaughlin and his young sons who emigrated to Canada from Shinrone in County Offaly, near the border of County Tipperary and Munster. They came in 1845, just as the Famine or Great Hunger began. On our first day leaving Dublin, our destination was Shinrone. It is a small town that is not on the tourist beat, and we did not find much to point us on genealogy, but it was special nonetheless. Something that connects both my dad and I, us with Gigi, and us all with a lineage centuries back in time.

4.

The things Ireland is most full of are shades of green and grey. But the next two things Ireland is full of are cows and sheep. There are 12.5 million cattle and sheep against 5.5 million people, in a country smaller than Maine. After we left Dublin we had a rental car and between every occasional town were pastures and pastures for livestock. Counties Offaly and Tipperary (Day 4) were a mix of both; County Clare (Days 5 and 7) was mostly cattle, Dingle Peninsula (Day 6) was mostly sheep left to roam the mountains, and County Meath was a mix, with a lean to sheep. Near Shinrone, while we were looking for a hill where fairies live (none seen), we trespassed on a man’s cattle farm. Fortunately he was friendly about it and gave us a tour.

5.

This is the Rock of Cashel. It was probably my favorite singular thing I saw, with history back on the site to St. Patrick to Oliver Cromwell (two figures on the ends of the spectrum in Ireland hearts) with a ruined cathedral and intact chapel sitting on a grand hill overlooking County Tipperary. A seat fit for the Kings of Munster. I was swimming in the history and architecture, which includes, aside from St. Pat and Cromwell, Brian Boru, Henry II, round towers, Romanesque frescoes, and medieval visions of hell before Dante.

6.

This is from Poulnabrone in The Burrens, County Clare. The Burrens is a wonderfully stark landscape with rock formations and filled with history. It was here we realized every region of Ireland was different in ways small and large. We spent a whole day driving through, stopping as we went at everything from a ring fort that served as a single family home from 1200-1700, an old chapel (the cows above were near here), and this, a portal tomb from the fourth millennium BC. For perspective, the Pyramid of Giza is dated to 2600 BC, the fall of Troy was roughly 1100 BC, and Rome was founded in 800 BC. 3,000 years before the Battle of Marathon, some Irish duine were raising cattle and stacking rocks right here.

The header photo is also from north of The Burren on the same day, looking over the edge of the Ireland and into the Atlantic, near the town of Doolin

7.

This assuredly is not one of my better nor more interesting pictures. But no memoriam of this trip could pass without a comment on the roads. Folks, get the insurance because the roads are narrow and the Irish are used to them. They drive on the right of both the road and vehicle which is merely one-half the struggle. My fear pre-trip was that I would go the wrong way in a round-a-bout. That actually was not an issue; there are a lot of them (probably ten for every stop light, at least beyond Dublin) and they of course spin clockwise, but they feed you in a way that it would be impossible to go against the grain. No, its the width of the roads. This pictured road is on the small side but far from uncommon. Our first day with the car in Shinrone and Tipperary was full of them just as I was learning the car. I scuffed my wheels on that first day because when you are driving on the other side, you naturally want to push your body position to closer to where you are used to, which is the other side of halfway in your lane and you therefore hug the left more than ideal. Renee was a good sport as I learned. As you can see, the speed limit is 60kmh and often 80kmh, which is the highest I saw non motorways go. Driving these roads is a series of: Go 60-65 (37-45ish mph), drop to a crawl, hug the left to let a bus or car pass at unreasonable speed, back to 40-60, drop down, feear for mirrors, speed up, repeat. After the first day and an easier but frequent taste of it the next day in The Burren, I almost lost my mind when we had to travel 150km to Dingle and 20 min in Google Maps shunted us onto small roads. We quickly found our way back to a major road and knew to be more aware. Lord knows what it was doing, other than it likes direct paths. Do not listen to Google, stay on the N roads when covering distance (or on the handful of M’s, which are their Interstate equivalents) and away from L’s and R’s.

8.

This is a cheat of a two-fer, with two views in Dingle Peninsula. Rick Steve’s Ireland Travel Guide was our primary research tool and Rick loves the Dingle Peninsula. He would have been personally offended I think if we did the more popular Ring of Kerry. The Peninsula is a little spit of land south of Clare and north of Kerry. This was the long distance drive I spoke of in the prior entry. The hub of the area is Dingle the town, with the pretty colored buildings. It is a tourist town for sure, but still quiet and nicely done. We enjoyed the shops and pub, where I had my most photogenic and potentially tastiest fish and chips. This may be the place to say I had 4 pints of Guinness in Ireland and 3 fish and chips total in the trip, so, you know, balance. Dingle Peninsula allows for a drive along the shore, where we saw more sheep, the islands where Luke Skywalker hid in the Sequel Trilogy, a surfer, and a third different landscape from Clare and Tipperary with its own greens and greys. On the way home we passed through Au Chonair, Connor Pass, on the peninsula which is where the sheep photo is from.

9.

No series of Ireland photos would be complete without a Cliffs of Moher photo. This was on Thursday, which was day seven of the trip, and I was getting worn and felt my worst on this day. We had also seen the island meeting the sea at many points, including not that far away in Doolin. It was actually our intent to do it on our Burren day (Tuesday) and why we were in Doolin, but the fog was rolling in and it was getting late, so we drove past the parking lot and back to homebase in Ennis. We were debating our Thursday but were not coming up with a ton of ideas, and we thought we better do Cliffs of Moher.

It blew all the negativity vibes I just described out to sea. Sure, it is another place where the Emerald Isle meets the Atlantic. But look at it. It is stunning, exceptional, majestic and whatever other adjectives you want to use. Not everything holds up to fame and expectation, but this is one. It was busy with tourists, but we had our first true Ireland weather day which tampered the crowds both in number and enthusiasm and we were willing to walk farther than others along the cliffs, leaving lots of views to share with smaller groups of people. The Cliffs were a gift in that they powered me through a day when my mind might have got the best of me and I could not help but enjoy in wonder.

10.

The final photo is from the same Cliffs of Moher day, leaving our final full day unpictured. More on that day in my concluding thoughts. I use this picture because, aside from being quite nice if I do say so myself (the medieval masons and laborers did the hard part), I see it as a tribute to the serendipity of the trip. We planned this trip kind of loose; we had very few set things—really just Book of Kells at Trinity, Shinrone Monday, and Bru Na Boinne on the last day. The rest we planned the day of, night before, and only occasionally two days out. Doing it this way, we probably did fewer things we could re-find on a map or describe to others. But we “happened upon” a lot. This is the Ennis Friary, a 13th century monastery in the town where we stayed Monday through Thursday nights. It was our second hub after Dublin, but we really did not explore on the first several days; eating all four dinners that week in the hotel pub (Poet’s Corner, which was quite good and worth repeating) and spending days away. I already described how I was low energy and starting to get ready for home on Thursday, and so I was more than down to take the afternoon after Cliffs of Moher slow and walk the town. After Renee found a cool hat in an even cooler store, we determined “let’s walk to the monastery as a destination to at least see something.” Despite this lack of planning, we found one of my favorite places in the trip. As I said, it dates from the 1200s and was used in various forms into the 1800s when the roof caved in. The history was again great (I am a Medieval Europe fiend at heart and this trip was a pot of gold for that) but what stuck with me was how the building was presented, for lack of a better term. It is a ruined monastery out of use for hundreds of years, but they have restored it to an enclosed building with modern glass, wood posts, and lighting unlike I have seen. To find something that really struck me so much when it was so off hand was very fitting for this trip.

Concluding Thoughts

Obviously there was a lot unpictured and unsaid here. Our last full day was a very good day as well, as the city of Athlone and its lake, the Hill of Tara, and Bru Na Boinne were all memorable. If I had space for more, each of the latter two would merit their own entries; Tara, hill of Patrick’s first major mass and the crowning and burial of ancient kings, because it showed the power of listening to your travel buddy, and Bru Na Boinne because it too has 6,000 year old history and is a grand tomb where on the winter solstice a ray of light pierces 150 ft. deep into this mound to light the innermost sanctum. But alas, I said ten. We stayed near Dublin Airport on Friday night and took all of Saturday flying home.

It is a special place made more special by getting to share it with Renee. There was a lot we did not see but I would not change anything except some practicalities. I have a list for next time. Two real days in Dublin was enough for a single trip and our “two-hub” approach was the right one. I do hope to return one day but I feel like we did a complete trip that sated my blood-deep pull back to Eire for now.

Bonus Photo

My U2-fan dad lost (positively gaping!) in the band’s exhibit at the Little Museum of Dublin, a nice all-in-one history museum of Dublin and Ireland in a Georgian home off St. Stephens Green. The song “Bad” off The Unforgettable Fire was played a lot on our trip, as was the length of Joshua Tree, my personal favorite album.