Anyway, back to Cornwall! Saturday morning, Mom and I got up nice and early for a lovely breakfast in the B&B, and then set off for the bus to St. Ives, about half an hour away. St. Ives is known as an artist's community, and it is full of lovely shops and galleries, as well as the beautiful scenery which inspires so many works of art.
I was disappointed that I hadn't seen any pirates in Penzance (thanks a lot, Gilbert and Sullivan), but our innkeeper told us that the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie is being filmed in part over in St. Ives, and that Johnny Depp is currently in residence at a small castle there. Though we looked diligently, we did not see him, or any other pirates. We did, however, pass by the castle where he is staying, which I will count as a small victory.
We arrived in St. Ives without much of a plan for what to do, so we spent most of our time wandering along the wharfside street until lunchtime. 'Twas very pretty.
There were little kids playing in the water... even in October!
Oh hey, I found the pirates!
Lunch, of course, consisted of a pasty and ice cream-- two Cornish specialties that one simply cannot skip in this town, where they are supposedly at their best. The pasty was good, and had to be eaten with the utmost caution, as the seagulls which patrol the beachside benches have learned over the years that swooping in on unsuspecting tourists and grabbing the pasty from their hands is infinitely easier than catching fish.
Beware.
Choosing where to go for ice cream was the greatest challenge of the day. Cornish ice cream is the creme de la creme (if you'll pardon the pun) of all ice cream like products created in this fine country, and each company boasts that theirs is superior. In the end, we each went to a different store-- I think Mom chose best (texture-wise), but mine was a very cool flavor (blackcurrent cheesecake). Anyway, it's pretty hard to go wrong with Cornish ice cream, so dessert was a great success.
We then headed over to the Tate Gallery-- a modern art museum overlooking the ocean. The exhibit itself was ok-- a retrospective of a famous local artist's life work, which was good, but not entirely to my taste. But the views from the museum, I must say, were rather distracting, and we quickly made our way back outside to explore the beach for ourselves.
Though I can't possibly imagine why anyone would be distracted by views like this...
We then decided to do a bit of clambering about on the rocks on the cliff-y side of the beach.
I came, I saw, I conquered....and now I can't get back down.
Those rocks are a loooong way down.
These surfers are half human, half penguin-- otherwise there is no way they could stand how cold that water must have been.
It was kinda cold and windy though, so we headed back into town to do a bit of shopping. Strangely enough (or maybe not), we only bought chocolate, despite the many cute shops with fun handcrafted jewelry and such. We enjoyed a bit of chocolate on the bus ride home (delicious!), and then walked back from the bus station to our B&B, where we rested a bit before heading to a pub (the oldest in Penzance!) for dinner. I met a very strange character at the bar when I went to get a drink (the locals are...shall we say... interesting), and dinner took an awfully long time, but it was very tasty.
We walked home through the creepy churchyard again. With the number of random black cats running around that town, and the graveyard right behind our B&B, I was beginning to get the heebie-jeebies (hahahaha-- I've never used that phrase before, and it's kind of hysterical. I should use it more often). Of course, the next morning, Mom was kind enough to inform me that the hotel three doors down was the one that we almost stayed in but didn't because it was supposedly haunted. Three doors down. Attached to the same graveyard that our hotel was...the same one that I had to walk through like six times in the dark. I'm very glad that we left shortly after this revelation.
Our house= the one on the right. Haunted house= the one on the left.
Sunday was not terribly eventful. We woke up, we ate breakfast, I finished reading Northanger Abbey for class the next day, and we walked to a little nearby park and wandered around in it for twenty minutes, before taking a taxi to the train station and spending five hours riding back to Bath.
The lovely little park.
Once in Bath, we checked into Mom's new hotel, and went out for dinner at Tilley's, a French/English restaurant, which was really really good (maybe I can go back for appetizers and dessert?). I had all the best intentions of going home that night, since I had been away for three nights already, but I was too full and much too lazy to carry my bags back up the hill that night. So I stayed in the hotel downtown (I'm really not complaining).
Monday morning, I went back to my house for a bit, and then had my Jane Austen class, during which time, Mom went to visit the Jane Austen Center (very fitting). We did a little bit of shopping after class (presents to send home) before meeting Clay and Ali for Indian food (they wanted to meet Mom, and she them, and we all wanted food. This seemed the most convenient solution). After dinner, I took Mom on the Bizarre Bath tour (which was still a lot of fun, but I think I liked the guide on my first tour a bit better). The tour ended late, so I wound up staying in the hotel again (I'm pretty sure that my housemates thought I had been abducted by aliens... or maybe the ghost from Penzance).
I took Mom to the train the next morning, and saw her off (*sniff*). It was so nice to have her here, and we had a really great time traveling, and I miss her already!
Just in case this last line made anyone sad, please enjoy this bit of cheer in the form of an adorable dog looking ashamed while sitting above a sign prohibiting dogs from that beach:
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