First day in Ireland

Sorry, it's been a few days, but I haven't had Internet. Here's a report on my first full day on the Emerald Isle.

Day 1 consisted of mostly travel. 940pm flight from JFK, land at Shannon airport around 10am their time. Anyone with a Euro passport is simply sent through customs with a smile as long as they hold up their passport photo. Then again, all I got was a stamp and sent through. I wish U.S. customs were just as quick…well, maybe not.

Upon landing at Shannon, Mel and I took a 2-hour bus ride to Cork (Ireland’s second biggest city), had a 2 hour wait, and then another hour-long bus ride to Ballycotton. The second bus happened to have mostly uniform-dressed middle schoolers going home from school on it. Looking out the window on the bus ride, I noticed a couple things.

First—Ireland really IS the Emerald Isle. Rolling, perfectly green-grass hills covered every bit of land in between the patches that were city.

Second—I saw a lot more black people than red-heads…yes, you read that right. Those Irish stereotypes are a bit off (although the pub beer-drinking one is dead-on).

Robyn, our host, picked us up at Ballycotton and brought us to our chalet (really a cabin) at The Ballymaloe House to unpack and shower after a long day of traveling. Robyn is a New Zealand transplant who happened to come to Ireland 7 years ago and did a few months of work at the Ballymaloe Cookery School and in the Ballymaloe hotel before settling down in Ireland and marrying Darren, a son of one of the hotel’s owners. Robyn is a graphic designer (she did Ballymaloe’s website) and she also helps out in the gardens and provides salad greens/herbs to the restaurant. Darren raises pigs and hens for food and eggs and is a big kite surfer.

SO just to make sure you understand Ballymaloe is a cooking school, restaurant, hotel and farm, as well as selling food its own products/cookbooks. It’s pretty sweet.

Robyn and Darren then made us some chicken, fresh salad from the garden with arugula, mustard greens, and rocket lettuce, and lastly a potato and just-picked asparagus salad with homemade mayonnaise. Instead of eating at her house, the four of us, joined by their terrier-beagle, took a 2-minute drive to the ocean shore and ate right on the cliffs that lead into the water.

After dinner, we went to the local pub, Blackbird, for a pint of Murphy’s beer, which is brewed in Cork. Yes, the Irish like their pubs. After meeting some friends of Robyn's, we went to sleep early because of some bad jet lag.