Monday, Sept 23 As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man . . .

Monday, September 23, 2013 As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with . . .

Today started off with a bang.  The wrecker man (or rescue vehicle as they say here) showed up early but I was waiting for him anyway.  After looking things over, he confirmed that we did NOT have a spare as I had told the Avis man and that a new tire would be needed.  He said this type of thing – ruining tires by hitting the marble curbs and pieces of marble in the verge when drivers pull over to the side to pass cars – happens all the time, even to the people who live here. 

 The place he was supposed to take the car did not have that type of tire on hand and couldn’t get one until Tuesday, so I asked him if we could take it somewhere else.  He called the place next door to the original place and they had one – yea!!  However, Avis said we had to use the first place so we were carless today.  (It was kind of nice, actually.)  Brian, the AA man (rescue vehicle driver), jacked up the car – even on that terrible slope and exchanged the ruined back tire with the good front tire and then some how back our car down the slope and lifted it with his lift (I never saw the lift because it was inside his vehicle somehow) and took it to the garage.  He expected the process of loading our car onto the lift to “cause a bit of mayhem” since it would be blocking a very busy road for a few moments.  Evidently it went okay because our car was gone a little while later.

We had a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel and then set out to walk down the hill to the train station.  It was an easy experience to get tickets and get on the train to St. Ives.  

 We had to stop at St. Erth for about a half hour to wait on the next train to St. Ives.  As we arrived at St. Ives the weather was starting to lighten up just a little bit, but it was quite foggy or cloudy and it was very, very windy.  

 We walked around the wall and down the hill into St. Ives.  The streets were very narrow and full of people.  I sure was glad to not be driving those streets, believe me.  I was not impressed with the water and the harbor in general because the cloudy skies made everything look fairly depressing.  We wandered around and continued down to the promenade where we were assaulted by the wind which was blowing quite hard.  

 I have never seen so many dogs out and about with their owners.  There were big dogs and small dogs and medium sized dogs.  Purebred and mutts but they were everywhere, even on the trains.  All of them were well behaved and there were no problems at all.  

We went into galleries and shopped around.  One artist was painting a portrait from a photograph and I asked about her painting one for me.  When she said her drawings cost 75 pounds for each head and the paintings start at about 1200 pounds, I decided I wasn’t really interested in her painting for me.

We then wandered up one block into the street with all the shops.  Boy, there were a lot of shops and a lot of people shopping and quite a few cars and vans in a very narrow street with lots of people.  I sure was glad to not be driving.  We bought different items while on this street and found a good place for lunch, We had Cream Tea which is tea, scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam instead of lunch today.  It was very good and everyone enjoyed it.  The Cook House, which is where we had the tea, called us a taxi but we had to wait a long time for it to arrive. So, we went shopping while we were waiting!!  After he picked us up, he had to drive very slowly down that very small street but he managed to not hit anyone and that was almost surprising.  He got us to the train station with about 3 minutes before the train left.  

 As we left St. Ives, the sun was shining so nice and brightly.  The sky was a beautiful blue and the water was so different looking than it had been that morning.  Everything was now beautiful where it had been fairly depressing that morning.  

We had a good ride back to St. Erth.  Thankfully, Sue paid attention to the ever changing signs that tell what train is next on which platform and what time it will be arriving because we were not on the correct platform.  We had to walk over the tracks after climbing up lots of steps and then going down lots of steps to the other platform.  The sign said the next train would arrive at 17:00 (5 p.m.) and that meant we would have to wait an hour there.  We were disappointed because we wanted to get Sarah back to visit Mount St. Michael near Penzance.  Oh well.  Some of us started to the restroom (There was no where to shop) by walking back over the tracks again but I made them stop so I could take photos. 

 

That’s our other favorite hobby other than shopping.  Anyway, as we were doing photos along came a train to Penzance.  Turns out the train was running late and we got lucky again.  We really do have astounding good luck.  I think it was good that we had no car today and everything just works so well for us. 

After the train ride, we queued up and took two taxis to Mount St. Michael.  Only Sarah and Sue trekked out on the stone causeway to walk to the mount and the rest of us sat in the sunshine and enjoyed the strong breeze.  The tide was coming in and the girls ended up with wet feet before they arrived at the island.  Once they were there, they discovered that they had arrived a little too late and the castle touring was closed for the day.  They were able to wander around a little bit and then take a boat ride back to the mainland.  I had walked down to a really large rock and discovered that the far side is where the boats landed and the girls were just arriving.  I was able to get photos of them on the boat and disembarking from the boat.  It was our usual good luck timing.  

We walked back up to the roadways and shops of Marazion and called a couple of taxis to return us to our hotel.  The second taxi driver was a woman who actually drove on the sidewalk as she made a three point turn in order to get back to us.  That made me feel like I might be becoming a professional driver since I have also been known to drive on sidewalks!!!!

We rested at the hotel for a short while and then took a several person taxi (with the middle row of seats facing backward) to the Turk’s Head Pub which is the oldest pub in Penzance.  The taxi driver showed me the statue of an old fashioned sniper on the roof of the Admiral Benbow Pub just down the street. Look closely.

 The Turk’s Head Pub seems to be a place where locals eat and it was just like a pub should be – dark, crowded, and interesting.  The waitresses did a good job of laughing with us, taking care of our food and drinks and just generally being very helpful.   We ate filling meals of fish and chips (which included mushy peas) and one of us ate a hamburger, as usual.   It was all good so we also ordered desserts of ice cream, cheesecake and fruit tarts with clotted cream.  That was all good also.  They had devised a wonderful system for each person paying separately.  The waitress brought a bucket of rocks to the table and everyone chose one for themselves.  Each rock had a number painted on it and this number was used to denote who ordered which drink, meal, and dessert – there was no confusion at all because of this system.

We called the same taxi to return us to the hotel and now we are thinking of hiring this company to take us for a short tour of Penzance, Land’s End and Mousehole (pronounced Mou’ zell) tomorrow morning.   We won’t know until we speak to the owner of the company in the morning to see if the price is what we are willing to pay, but we hope we can arrange it.  This means we will not waste any time while waiting for the car to finish being fixed in the morning.  Again, we shall see how it works out.  So far, we’ve had wonderful luck and we expect that to continue.

There is a Hotel Cat here at Hotel Penzance and his name is Jerry.  He wanders fairly freely through the hotel though they have to remove him from the restaurant on a regular basis. Once today when Sarah returned to her room, the cat dashed into her room and it took Sarah a while to get him out.  

Considering where we spent most of the day, I have to ask this.  Will you read and study the following and then reply to ME the answer.  Thanks.  As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.  Every wife had seven sacks.  Every sack had seven cats.  Every cat had seven kits.  Kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to St. Ives???  

 

We are considering beginning our own poem.  As I was going to Penzance, I met a man who couldn't dance.  Or should it be a man with holes in his pants.  Or perhaps a man with no pants.  We just can't decided.  Any comments on that???