Cornwall's very cool. It's all beautiful and has this great sense of adventure to it, except the tourist traps. Actually some of the tourist traps are even pretty adventurous, I thoroughly enjoyed Land's End despite its every effort to make me feel like I needed to immediately buy another trinket. Alexandra liked the Greeb Farm.

There's an open-air topped double-decker tourist bus that cruises around and goes to off beat places like Senna Cove, which we would probably have missed otherwise. Senna was so fine that we didn't even bother heading up to Newquay or St Ives.

The only part that was actually lame was St Michael's Mount. It is, ahem, best enjoyed from a distance, but the beach between there and Penzance is more excellent. The Mount is, nonetheless, a part of some very interesting stories, but if the Archangel Michael actually did appear there in 495 AD it's no mystery why he's not there now.

We operated out of St Just, which gave us access to great (20 mile plus) coastal walks across cliffs and oceans and abandoned tin mines. I tried to get everyone to join me in improvisational rounds of "The Happy Wanderer," but only Myles was interested. We had some good ones though (often about the frailties of others in our party), and someone was even heard to mutter "My kingdom for a keg of Gatorade…" It was a fine tournament and I'm glad that the weather held up.

I'm not saying that each and every moment was copasetic, just that not everyone did it right when I demanded that henceforth "Every statement has to be made in the form of a complaint!" Amelia was particularly helpful during those times, intoning such things (in the Scottish accent of the Big Brother narrator) as: "Hoose-mayet Myles is not pleased that he's to brush his teeth. He'd rawthuh pley gehmes, but will hoose-mayet Theresa hevvit?"

We were definitely at our worst in games of Uno back at the hotel, sitting in the common area and horrifying the other guests. I played three Draw 4 cards on Amelia just as she was going out and we never recovered. She pretty much then dedicated the rest of her card-playing life to giving me points. I felt the wrath. Then it turned into a game of "wrathing" each other, with the awful Americans and their horrible children shouting "Haha! Feel the green wrath!" "I'm going to draw until I get some wrath cards and play 'em on you!" Lots of healthy bonding like that.

I eventually almost missed the train home, because I'd forgotten to get "the dumbest, worst, most ridiculous tourist keychain that I can find..." and so rushed up and down the streets of Penzance. I made the train (everyone else was on) as it was starting to roll and I have to say, in the flush of great success (it's a Cornish Pasty):

A fine time was had by all, and we'll definitely do Penzance again and again. Amelia wants to stay in Lizard next time, though, I think because of the name.

travel all you like, but it's always nice to get home