Sunday

Perfect room.  I can enter my room through the outside from the car park, or wend my way inside:  down the hall, up two steps, up one step, through the fire door, up a flight of steps, through a fire door, up two steps, fire door, fire door, flight of steps, fire door, hall, fire door, switchback steps and into the lobby!  Not for the faint of heart.

Walked down into the town.  As steep as the hills in Seattle - about 15 minutes down and 30 minutes back up!  I wandered down the streets, gazed over Truro river (pretty small although there is an old rusted lock standing open and I watched two paddlers go by.   I went into Truro Cathedral (Church of England) and they were about halfway through the 6th
Sunday sung eucharist service.  The reader was the President (a female canon!) and she had a beautiful voice.  The choir of about 30 voices (some young boys all the way up to granddad) was amazing.  I am going back to the cathedral one day this week - when it is not a Sunday I will be able to look around a little more.  It is stunning - carved stonework and intricately carved wooden walle, vaulting arches at least 100 feet tall and massive 50 foot stained glass windows all around and especially up in the front.  Gorgeous flower arrangements and a baptismal font in a nook off to the side that must have taken 50 craftsmen several years to complete.  There were about 100 people in the congregation, and everyone was intent on making the right responses (as I was).  I participated in the communion, and had a wonderful mystical and satisfying connection in awesome surroundings.

More walking.  I had a genuine Cornish pasty for lunch.  They can be all kinds, but I had a sterak pasty with potatoes and carrots.  The thing that makes it as pasty instead of a pie is the shape - distinctive turnover with one rolled side that the tin miners of old could hold with their tin-contaminated nasty dirty fingers while they ate the other side of the pie.  They say one woman would take on the delivery service - drive in her horse-drawn cart past all the tine miners cottages each morning to collect all the wrapped pasties and then take them to the tin mine.  They would sit on the smelted tin sheets to stay warm until dinner time, and then each miner would find his own lunch that his wife had packed for him that morning.  The one I had was pretty good, but I don't think I'll waste another lunch on a pasty.

I can tell this is a good hotel I am in because the toilet paper is very luxorious!  I am bring a sample back home with me.  It is not ply that I can separate out, but it would be about 10 ply if it was.

It has just dawned on me - there were no road side billboards during the entire drive yesterday.  No big hotel or restaurant signs in the town either.  It makes it a little confusing to find places, but much more peaceful than the glaring advertisements we see everywhere at home.

I had come back to the hotel twice during the day, so I traveled up the long weary hills to the hotel from the town three times by the time I came home for dinner, only to find out the hotel dining room is closed on Sunday!  Back all the way into town.  Very few things were open at 6:30 on a Sunday, but I found a wonderful Italian place and had Bucatini All'Amatriciana - fat hollow spaghetti with a spicy sauce with pancetta and carmelized onions.  I am trying for English experiences all the way and this was not too English, but it certainly was a delicious exception.

Most of the people I see are in family groups.  I will see two or three young men or women but most of the groups look like they might be family groups, teenagers to grandparents.  There were several groups like this in the restaurant tonight, whooping it up like they were friends and not family.

I pulled my weary self back up to the hotel one last time and I am bringing my journal up to date.  I have made my plans for tomorrow - I'll brave the roads again and go to Land's End, St Ives, Penzance, St Michael's Mont and Mousehole.  The distances between these places are small, but I don't know how far I'll get on that list.  It is supposed to rain on Tuesday so I will spend that day in Truro again - going back to the cathedral and visiting the museum - supposed to be one of the best in Sornwall.  I'm hoping to learn about the smuggling that was rampant during the 1800's.  Then Wednesday I'll finish my north shore destinations and start on the south shore - Poldard Mine, Falmouth, Flambard's Experience and Pendennis Castle.  I'm not sure about the exact sequencing there, but I'll look it up the night before.

Goodnight, dear diary.