Day 6: Past the Halfway Point. It's All Downhill From Here.
Today we took as sort of a rest day. After breakfast it was massages for the both of us. I have been admonished not to publish any photos of this experience.
After that we headed into Tenby, which is a beach resort sort of town. You can tell by the prevalence of ice cream and candy shops on just about every corner, plus olde style pubs which have multiple sandwich boards out front advertising Traditional Welsh Food as well as Authentic Thai Cuisine. But if you can look past all that, it's quite lovely and the weather was beautiful today as well.
We wandered around town with the initial hopes of visiting the Tudor Merchant's House. Our hopes were dashed upon finding their door locked and seeing their opening arrangements board, which had a fairly complex graph of closing days which revealed after a few minutes of studying that it was closed on Tuesdays during this particular week of this particular month of the year. So we consoled ourselves with visiting the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery. Their pamphlet, available at various spots around town, had a picture of part of a suit of armor on the front so we at least thought that there might be some interesting pieces. In fact, the actual armor from the front of the pamphlet was a Crappy Tin Knight* which they'd apparently received from the house on St. Catherine Island and put on display. I was not impressed with the museum, however, I found their signage amusing:
We took a spin around Castle Hill afterwards and here is a picture of cathyn with an enormous Prince Albert:
And here is St. Catherine Island. Our helpful guide book explains that during low tide you can walk out to it, but if you get stuck there when the tide comes in it will be a cold, miserable wait to get back. And also the only structure is a Victorian-era fort which is not open to the public anyway (so why would you go there in the first place, really?).
It was, nevertheless, a nice way to pass an afternoon, wandering around little narrow streets lined with shops and cafes inside a walled town, and we even popped into St. Mary's Cathedral there in town, where Henry Tudor hid before he fled to Brittany (before returning to England to become Henry VII). On our way out of the walled part of town we spied an absolutely painful cliche and couldn't resist snapping a pic.
Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe. Srsly people.
Finally we checked out the Lamphey Bishop's Palace, which is across the little one-lane road from our hotel complex. In front of the wall around the Bishop's Palace stand these sad little things. I said to Cathyn, "What are palm trees doing in Wales??" and he said, "Probably dying."
We paid our £3.50 and went in. In slightly tangential news, I have yet to see an ancient ruin I wasn't dying to pay an entrance fee to see. I seriously never get bored of these things. We quite admired the vast and sprawling complex and agreed that a vow of poverty would be much easier to abide whilst living in a palace than practically anywhere else.
We may stay in tonight, as the hotel restaurant is execrable (discovered to our despair Sunday night), and we have picnic foods and might have picked up some more Crabbie's in Tenby. Tomorrow: Onward to Cardiff!
*You know what a Crappy Tin Knight is, it's a full suit of armor made for display purposes, usually outside an Authentic British Pub in Colorado or in a junk store in Juarez.
After that we headed into Tenby, which is a beach resort sort of town. You can tell by the prevalence of ice cream and candy shops on just about every corner, plus olde style pubs which have multiple sandwich boards out front advertising Traditional Welsh Food as well as Authentic Thai Cuisine. But if you can look past all that, it's quite lovely and the weather was beautiful today as well.
We wandered around town with the initial hopes of visiting the Tudor Merchant's House. Our hopes were dashed upon finding their door locked and seeing their opening arrangements board, which had a fairly complex graph of closing days which revealed after a few minutes of studying that it was closed on Tuesdays during this particular week of this particular month of the year. So we consoled ourselves with visiting the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery. Their pamphlet, available at various spots around town, had a picture of part of a suit of armor on the front so we at least thought that there might be some interesting pieces. In fact, the actual armor from the front of the pamphlet was a Crappy Tin Knight* which they'd apparently received from the house on St. Catherine Island and put on display. I was not impressed with the museum, however, I found their signage amusing:
We took a spin around Castle Hill afterwards and here is a picture of cathyn with an enormous Prince Albert:
And here is St. Catherine Island. Our helpful guide book explains that during low tide you can walk out to it, but if you get stuck there when the tide comes in it will be a cold, miserable wait to get back. And also the only structure is a Victorian-era fort which is not open to the public anyway (so why would you go there in the first place, really?).
It was, nevertheless, a nice way to pass an afternoon, wandering around little narrow streets lined with shops and cafes inside a walled town, and we even popped into St. Mary's Cathedral there in town, where Henry Tudor hid before he fled to Brittany (before returning to England to become Henry VII). On our way out of the walled part of town we spied an absolutely painful cliche and couldn't resist snapping a pic.
Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe. Srsly people.
Finally we checked out the Lamphey Bishop's Palace, which is across the little one-lane road from our hotel complex. In front of the wall around the Bishop's Palace stand these sad little things. I said to Cathyn, "What are palm trees doing in Wales??" and he said, "Probably dying."
We paid our £3.50 and went in. In slightly tangential news, I have yet to see an ancient ruin I wasn't dying to pay an entrance fee to see. I seriously never get bored of these things. We quite admired the vast and sprawling complex and agreed that a vow of poverty would be much easier to abide whilst living in a palace than practically anywhere else.
We may stay in tonight, as the hotel restaurant is execrable (discovered to our despair Sunday night), and we have picnic foods and might have picked up some more Crabbie's in Tenby. Tomorrow: Onward to Cardiff!
*You know what a Crappy Tin Knight is, it's a full suit of armor made for display purposes, usually outside an Authentic British Pub in Colorado or in a junk store in Juarez.