Cornwall!

Ah... the complete and total opposite experience of Barcelona...

Barca was loud...but I didn't get the *full* experience because I was there during the middle of the week. On the other hand, I'm in Cornwall... a sleepy quiet rustic place where I'm pretty much camping... on the weekend. Cackle! I know how to do this!!

Fortunately after a first day of rainy foggy chilly weather, Britain seems to be bringing me the sun... and oh my do I appreciate it!!

Yesterday's adventure was just getting here. Flight was an hour late. Spanish football hooligans roamed the aisle in a really odd way. I'm not used to being on flights where people wander the aisle anymore. But they were sitting on the arm of each other's seats and all kinds of just weirdness. Maybe they were just small enough people that such behavior wasn't uncomfortable as everything is for me on an airplane. (Ooh... quick snark interruption of my snark: The exit aisles were entirely populated by old guys. I almost laughed aloud when the flight attendant made her spiel... How would those guys save us?? Of course this was a non issue, thankfully.) Ok Spanish obnoxious guys eventually smacked me upside the head...oh so literally... in their enthusiasm. And now I *really* hate them. How hard is it to *not* hit someone! Also I'd just fallen asleep, so I was smacked awake. Fun times! Then some crap kid started screaming and just never stopped for the rest of the flight. Don't they run out at some point? And the folks did nothing at all. The whole plane was grumbling and annoyed... maybe even football hooligans.

I really miss Southwest! At certain points I was wishing I was taking a night bus again! Dang!!

And I got in trouble with British customs again. I never answer their oddly tricky questions right... which always leads to about a million more questions and the danger of me slipping into *special* voice and being imprisoned in some kind of black site. Maybe I *wouldn't* make the ideal drug mule after all!

Ok now at Bristol airport and checking out my rental car... right on time... I honestly have no idea how that happened. I did add a bunch of time onto the schedule for *eventualities*... and there was a time change... still it was a treat. :-)

And the guy tried to up sell me on an Audi with Sat Nav and such. I would have been tempted too, if it hadn't quadrupled the cost. Oh well... my Hyundai is fine. And it's fun to drive a stick again... tho it's almost too fancy for me. Tech changes on me so much between cars! And the left side isn't too bad. I got that side of my car crazy muddy the first rainy night pulling into a mud puddle off the side of the lane pulling over for a bus to go by on these wee Cornish lanes. That was an adventure. But my paint job seems intact. Whew! And I passed a couple of accidents coming down. It was rainy and *really* foggy... bad combo... but I'll always be grateful that I learned to drive in Boulder Creek. Fog, inclement weather, windy roads... these are in my muscle memory!!

Ok... so now I'm actually IN Cornwall. The place I remembered as my favorite part of the UK... The part of the UK most like CA. Does it maintain that place after a day of driving around these little lanes?

Well, the cliffy beaches near the hostel are definitely NorCal. Today I went to Newquay... somewhere I never got last time and always wanted to... and it was all sandy beaches and surfers... AND Aussie accents!! I'd forgotten that's another reason I enjoyed this part of the world. It's all Aussies on their gap year!! Surfing! Swoon!!

And I visited this hippie version of Kew Gardens today as well... where my hostel is located... The Eden Project. It's this biosphere project built on a gutted part of the country that had been mined and abandoned. Literally post Apocalyptic. And these people decided to make it green and beautiful again... and zero emissions... carbon neutral... make it an experiment of if this *could* be done for real with people living in these kinds of sites. Would it work? It's all very hopeful and forward thinking!

There are two biomes: tropical and Mediterranean. The tropical one was especially interesting. Could a community use these biomes to grow their food even in other kinds of real climates? There were banana trees and peanuts and rubber and all kinds of stuff! Rice of course... The Med one felt very comfy... just like home. They even had CA poppies growing in the CA section! It is seriously up there with Kew Gardens on the interest level... just in a completely different way! This is most definitely NOT an English garden! C:

My onsite hostel is similarly hippie. I'm staying in a converted shiping container. The room is small and basic... but totally clean and the bed is perfectly comfy. (Indeed last night I feel asleep almost as soon as I lay down...almost *too* comfy! This all says something tragic about my bed at the London flat... where I could feel the springs in my ribs and sometimes was driven to whimper. NOT comfy!!)

My big goal for tomorrow is to brave the windy lanes again to visit Tintagel... the supposed birthplace of King Arthur. Another place I never made it to last time and have always regretted. That's the main thing and I really don't have a sense of how long that will take. But if there's time I'll try also to go to a nearby garden that is apparently connected to the Eden Project: the Lost Garden. Such romantic names!!

I'll let you know... C: