PLAYING PIRATES IN PENZANCE

I have to preface this entry with the caveat that because it's been a number of weeks since Easter, I can't really remember exactly what we did, or if some of the things I think happened actually occured in real life or only in my imagination. I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, let alone some crazy adventures that happened weeks ago. Maybe I'll check my diary next time I'm home and remind myself of what we did - I remember it being much more exciting than it sounds below!

Easter long weekend: Adam, Sarah and I hired a car and drove to Cornwall. This trip is where all the new photos on my myspace page come from. As most of you know I'm occasionally known to be less than organised, so because I didn't arrange insurance in advance and Sarah is "between licences", Adam had to drive all the way to Cornwall himself. 5 hours. God bless him. The most energetic part for me was leaning over the driver to snap photos of Stonehenge as we whizzed past at [insert legal speed limit here] miles per hour. I can tick Stonehenge off the "things to see" list now...

We drove through five counties on the way there, and Cornwall was sooo pretty. We were staying in Newquay, which was a tacky seaside touristy place. Even so, it was a short stroll to the cliffs overlooking what appeared to be a surf beach, even though there weren't any waves. Those crazy British people.

The next day we went to St Ives and took some very nice photos. Couldn't be arsed climbing down the hill into the town and checking it out properly, but we got some pictures so that's all that matters, right? Then we went on to Penzance - yay! Strangely, we were the only adults walking around Penzance wearing an eye patch and skull-and-crossbones bandana while carrying swords and saying things like "yee-har me hearties". I was a bit surprised by that. I've tried to upload a couple of videos showing off our sword-fighting expertise, so check that out if you feel like a laugh.

We ended the day at Land's End, the westernmost point of the English mainland (I think). We were warned that it was tacky and disappointing because of the theme park built on top of the cliffs (hence the gigantic TARDIS in my photo) but we spent a couple of hours wandering south along the cliff tops and the views were just spectacular. It was a warm, sunny day. It was fantastic. I had a little nap on the mossy ground while the others took photos and gazed out across the ocean. So lovely. Topped off by watching a magnificent sunset. Living in Australia and Vietnam, I've hardly ever seen the sun set into the ocean, it was breathtaking.

On the way back to London the next day we stopped at The Eden Project (http://www.edenproject.com/). It's main features are these two huge bubbles/biomes which recreate a Humid Tropical and a Warm Temperate environment. The warm tropics one was incredible. When you walk in the humidity takes a little while to hit you, so it's not like stepping off the plane in Darwin or Bangkok, but after you've wandered around for a while it's a very genuine sweaty tropics experience. Being surrounded by the familiar dark green trees and leaves, warm air and almost-jungle smells made me feel a bit nostalgic for Bougainville or Thailand. I wasn't so keen on the warm temperate one, probably because I've never been to the Mediterranean or south america. And it wasn't warm in there. Pretty flowers though.

So that was it, we drove back into London and lived happily ever after. Adam and Sarah don't have myspace profiles, so they can't even add a comment here to remind me of all the things I forgot to say. If anything comes back to me in a blinding flash of inspiration I'll add it myself.

The internet cafe dude just said they're closing now, so I'll have to update you on the last two weeks next time I'm online. Cripes, maybe I'll write it down somewhere else first. Stay tuned!