The Ballymaloe Shop, Cork, Ireland
Ballymaloe House

The best hotel shops don't just sell pretty things, they create environments as compelling as their wares. They make shopping an experience. At Ballymaloe House, that experience is rural Ireland through and through. There's a farm, cooking school, and restaurant on 400 acres of grounds. Guests take mulled wine from the café to sip while browsing through the store, a cozy farm building with stone walls that form a perfect backdrop for artful earthenware such as indigo-and-white floral Burleigh platters and handblown Jerpoint glass. Then it's a saunter through the fields of leeks and loganberries to the cooking school, where you can purchase soups and pâtés made from ingredients that you just saw being harvested. Pay for the bounty of the land and then take it right back out there for a picnic amid the wildflowers bordering the placid lake.

Ballymaloe House
Shanagarry
Cork, Ireland
Tel: 353 21 4652 531

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