exploring & escapades

St Ives is blue, blue, warm, every shade of blue and light, quietly, knowingly waiting under the sun. 

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Day 3, Cornwall Trip

It was a twenty minute drive across the peninsula for us from Penzance to St Ives. We parked high on a hill just outside of the main village, it was so worth it for the view. I knew from pictures that St Ives was pretty, but seeing it in person… a real life painting of every shade of blue, the little brown orange buildings that seem as if they must have stood there forever… it was surreal.  

The walk down the hill was steep and long, and even though the temperature read less than seventy degrees fahrenheit, it felt as if it were over ninety in the hot sun. Again, this is all very worth it for the view. Once at the bottom, we made our way through winding streets, past more art galleries than I remembered to count, along the seawall, to the harbor, where it was loud, crowded, and  lively. In a strange way, none of this was annoying. It reminded me of Oaks Bluff or Hyannis. So many people here, not to check something off a list or capture the perfect picture, but simply to enjoy it. Here, we were so far away from the rest of the world. It barely existed. It didn’t matter. 

There were boat tours to seal island and to the lighthouse and simply out to sea. Shops, cafes, icecream, seafood, people paddle boarding, people spread out across the small harbor beach, colored dots of people speckled across surrounding sandy beaches in the distance. We didn’t see any seals, but we did see a lot of young kids fishing for crabs.

For lunch in St Ives, we walked all the way back to our harbor entrypoint to eat at a place appropriately named, “The Harbour.” We had a little table by the window upstairs with the most perfect sunny view of the sea, and the mussels that we shared to start were the best, biggest, most fresh mussels that I have ever had, anywhere. We both had the crab roll, fresh crab, right from the harbor. It was exactly what I wanted to be eating in that moment. It was so good. 

After lunch, we walked back across the harbor to get ice cream (real Cornish creamery ice cream, not even gelato!), and we sat on the seawall overlooking the beach to relax… AND THEN WE WERE ATTACKED BY SEAGULLS. Literally! The seagull landed on Vince, ripped his ice cream cone from his hand, and threw it on the beach! The seagulls swarmed around to eat it. We fled. A seagull landed on my shoulder and tried to take mine too, but failed. Suddenly, it made sense why none of the restaurants on the harbor had outdoor seating. Suddenly, we understood what a man we had overheard in Penzance meant when he said the seagulls there were much better than St Ives… If you take nothing away from this, please know that the legends of the seagulls in St Ives are real. 

We replaced our icecreams. We hid on a sidewalk. We ate in peace. It was delicious. And then we wandered in the sun, surrounded by blue and light, and everything was wonderful. 

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Cornwall, UK

When: July 2019

How long: 4 days (including 2 days of driving), 3 nights

Via: Drove our car 6 hours from Cambridge. We stopped in Portishead for lunch along the way. 

Stayed: Bright Flat nr Sea Front, Penzance 

Ate – Day 3: The Harbour Seafood Restaurant, St. Ives (lunch), Willy Wallers, St. Ives (icecream), The Tinners Arms, Zennor (drinks, snacks), The Dolphin Tavern, Penzance (dinner), Waterside Meadery, Penzance (drinks), Admiral Benbow (drinks)

Did – Day 3: St. Ives Harbour, Carbis Bay, pub trivia board games in the garden at The Tinners Arms, the deck at Waterside Meadery, pirate pinball at Admiral Benbow 

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You can read more about our first two days in Cornwall, here: Marazion, Lizard.