Cornwall

Hello again! I'm back to blogging! Olaf and I had a traveling dry spell for a couple months in the summer, but are now back on the road again.

I had a really wonderful time with my family in July. I was home for about a month, hanging out with my family, taking a law exam and attending a girl friend from law school's Chicago wedding. 

When I returned to London, Olaf was ready for a little break too. The City is empty in August, as all the bankers head to le Midi for the month. We had no summer holidays planned, as we've been saving Olaf's vacation time for trips back to California to spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with my family. Anyhow, we decided to use a Bank Holiday weekend (Monday off)to get out of the city. 


I try to ask English people about their favorite places in England. Multiple people have told me about Cornwall, including my hair stylist Stephen. 


Crack of dawn Saturday morning, Olaf and I picked up our Zipcar in Camden and took off for Cornwall. The trip to southwestern England was green and gorgeous, despite the masses of cars clogging the roads. We made it to Cornwall in about 7 hours. 

The roads were hellishly narrow. Two lane roads that were narrow even for a one lane road. I gotta admit, we grazed a few bushes and had a few birds flipped at us for driving too slow. After a harrowing hour off back country roads, we reached our weekend home, Nansloe Manor.

Nansloe Manor

The drive up to the hotel

Our faithful Zipcar

Happy cow on the manor grounds

 
On Saturday night we were so excited to be out of the city, so after dropping off our bags we headed to the coast. 

Our first stop was The Lizard. It was getting dark so we only walked along the cliffs for about an hour. It was super windy but we were giddy to be outdoors in the fresh air :)

I'm really not sure what language the people were speaking here.

  
Sunday morning we were up bright and early. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel- oatmeal for me, toast and eggs for Olaf. I learned that brown sugar is not brown sugar in England. It's raw sugar, and American brown sugar is called muscovado. Why I never read the labels of the sugar when baking in this country, I really don't know. 

View from our room on Sunday morning. 

We had to get through Mr Ed and friends to get to the cliffs

City boy in the country! Very happy about it too :)

I still had my California tan... sniff.

Supposedly Cornwall has horrendous weather- we were lucky with the sun.

Like seriously, this is England?

Evidence of the extremely agile cows that roam the cliffs of Cornwall. I was scared to be climbing so high, but these cows have got it down. You know which photo came after this one, but I refuse to publish it.

I think that's Prince William up there in the RAF helicopter. For real! You never know.

Seriously, this photo looks too similar to one we took in Big Sur. Obv the cliffs are a not as dramatic.

Sun! In England!

It was seriously cold. The water must have felt like ice, but the Brits were enjoying their sun and surf. Kids swimming in the water, most with wetsuits on, thankfully. 

We stopped and took a tea break at a nice surf shack kind-of place. Olaf and I talked the entire time about how incredibly NICE the people there were. Night and day to London. Totally different England. Polite. Not pushy. No drunkards. No drinking, actually.
 

Walk down to the surf shack.

Blackberries!

Some other town in Cornwall, where we had crappy, overpriced, but fresh, fish.

Tried a Cornish Pasty. Heard the ones in London are nuclear, so waited to try my first one in the pasty motherland. This is a steak and something one from Anne's Pasties.  Really good. Kind of like a pot pie to take away.