“Ireland Goes Beyond” is a slogan echoing the sentiment of many of the 1.3-million Americans who visited the Emerald Isle in 2025.
That’s 34-percent of the 6 billion in tourism revenue for the island of 7-million inhabitants. With that amount of greenbacks at stake, the Irish historically roll out the “green carpet.” But I find the red blood of Irish people pulses naturally. They have entertaining and hospitable hearts of gold at the end of a rainbow represented by the shape of a transatlantic flightpath of Aer Lingus jetliners into Dublin or Shannon.
Benner’s Hotel is a boutique beauty in the center of the classic, scenic, musical fishing village of Dingle, County Kerry. I lingered in the lobby early one morning alone with only a hotel-provided copy of the Irish Independent newspaper. I was waiting to indulge, at 7 am, in Chef Jimmy’s “Full Irish ‘fry-up’” breakfast, when I encountered one of the characters to give Ireland its charm. It was Mike Lyne, Benner’s 67-year-old, white-haired watchman who’d looked after the place from dusk ‘till dawn, including a self-admitted nightly nap at 3 am on the lobby’s cozy couch.
“I played Gaelic football for the Detroit team during a tournament in Cleveland once,” the genial gent told me upon learning I was from Michigan. “I was loaned to the Wolfetones. The team made it to the final match but lost.”
“Yeah, that also happens with Detroit’s NFL football team, the Lions,” I said.
I was anticipating the Irish black and white pudding I’d soon be tasting with a fried egg, sausages, bacon and brown bread buttered with Irish Kerrygold, when Lyne then told me he’d once drank from the Stanley Cup at a party.
“I left work for a couple hours for the chance to do it,” he admitted.
It wasn’t in “Hockeytown”/Detroit, but rather when the Rangers were NHL champs while he’d worked construction on New York’s Freedom Tower. Lyne said he’d also spotted Michigan’s “Material Girl,” Madonna, in Gotham. “Back then she was only a cage dancer at a club called ‘Area.’”
It was not a club, but a pub – J.J. Curran’s – where the previous day, Irish piper Peader Heggerty, a 40-year Dingle-dweller, detailed his dip into Detroit.
“I was visiting a cousin in Toronto, but I wanted to set foot in America. The closest way was to drive into Detroit for a couple hours. I asked my cousin to take us over the bridge for the view, but he insisted on using the tunnel.”
Heggerty didn’t remember if he had pints of Guinness in Detroit’s Irish “Corktown” area…which means he likely did!
Heggerty, 70, is an on-and-off fixture at timeless Dick Mack’s Pub and leatherworks, a fixture, itself, in Dingle’s drinking history since 1899. Dick’s draws tourists by, unlike uber authentic Curran’s, constantly, quirkily, twerking its footprint.
Luke, behind the traditional bar, poured me a pint when I randomly met Kayla Elias, a native “Pure Michigander” who grew up skiing and working at Boyne Mountain, where her father Faris is one of the resort’s original condo owners. Sheets of afternoon rain pelted the pub while she told me how she now runs a chefing business in Truckee, at Lake Tahoe, called “Chef Lulu’s.” She was in the middle of an extended stay in Ireland to study culinary arts at Ballymaloe House.
“It is a hotel, restaurant, wedding and event venue, and farm on 300 acres in East Cork,” Elias explained. “I wanted to experience the full cycle of food: true farm to table. At Ballymaloe, I found jersey cows for cheesemaking and dairy and a 6:1 teacher-to-student ratio from legendary chefs like Rachel Allen and Rory O’Connell. I am going to bring these recipes, techniques and philosophies home.”
She made me hungry, so I walked next door for fish and chips at the family-operated Fish Box restaurant. The famed Irish hospitality line “We’ll push the boat out for you” proved to be true, according to Fish Box’s owner, Micheal Flannery.
“My father has a trawler which my brother works on, so we get the fish fresh to my mother in the kitchen so we can serve quality food.”
During dinner days later up at Red Carnation’s Ashford Castle Hotel and Country Estate, near Galway, a tall, genial server told me he met Jessa VanderWeide, of Michigan’s DeVos family, who also attended Ballymaloe Cookery school. He said he served her and members of her family supper in the historic resort’s five-star George V dining room…with an extra touch of Irish hospitality.
“I played basketball, so I was aware that Dan DeVos owned an NBA team, so, when I greeted them, I wore an Orlando Magic cap.”
I’ve since learned Dick DeVos and his wife, former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, made a separate visit to Ashford Castle in September of 2025. The Grand Rapids-based guests were surprised when greeted by a thoughtful Ashford Castle attendant who’d sported an American flag on his hat in their support on a sensitive news day.
Ashford Castle, since 1939 as a hotel and even before as the 250-acre Guinness Estate, has welcomed world leaders, business titans, royals and celebrities with tender, loving care.
I am none of those, but it was an Irish goodbye (not technically) I received as my Irish sojourn wrapped up Dublin.
It came from guest ambassador Derek O’Brenan in the snazzy Anantara The Marker Hotel. Each evening at 6:30 he lulls guests in the lobby bar by performing an “End of the Day” ritual poem, as only an Irishman can. Before his rapturous reading that evening, the white-haired Dubliner presented me with a pint of porter precisely at one-minute before six: 17:59 in military time because the numbers match the year Guinness was founded.
“Scíth a ligean,” O’Brenan said, speaking in “the Irish,” urging me to be at ease. “New city – old Town – my home…you’re welcome!”
Contact Michael Patrick Shiels at MShiels@aol.com His new book: Travel Tattler – Not So Torrid Tales, may be purchased via Amazon.com Hear his radio talk show on 730 AM 1240 in Lansing weekdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Shiels: The embrace of Eire, the reason why Americans adore Ireland
Reporting by Michael Patrick Shiels, For the Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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