We arrived in Plymouth on Friday afternoon and checked into the Royal Navy Transient Quarters. I had forgotten how nice they were. About twenty years ago when the kids were all little we holidayed in the south of England and stayed in the ones in Gosport. These here in Plymouth were the same type of accommodation. We were assigned to a three-bedroom apartment (I think they call them maisonette�s,) complete with everything you need. Dishes, pots & pans, linens, iron and ironing board, etc. Nevertheless, Jenny and I weren�t born yesterday and we didn�t use the stove, or cooker as they call it over here, for more than boiling water as we have checked out of Navy digs before.
As soon as we had dumped all the suitcases we headed off to see the sights. Again we used the double decker tour bus to get an overview and decided what we wanted to go back and see. Downtown Plymouth, The City Centre, is much more modern than any other place I have been in England. Well, maybe not London. That is because during WWII the Germans blitzed Plymouth, especially the downtown area to smithereens. So what you see now was all rebuilt after the war. They took that opportunity to widen the streets and change the layout somewhat in order to make the city more �user friendly.� How�s that for a good cyber word? They also put in what they call �subways� which are under the street walkways at major intersections so Americans like me can cross the street without risking life and limb. I wasn�t too impressed with some of the architecture, but hey, I guess when someone has just flattened your city you probably don�t have time to dither around with trying to build another Paris, you just roll up you sleeves and get on with it. Then end result looks to me like Plymouth would be a very pleasant place to live, work and shop. You can drive a few miles up the road to the seaside villages if you want quaint or to Dartmoor if you want wild. While riding around we made out plans for Saturday, and decided on Chinese take away for dinner.
Saturday we slept in kind of late and then headed toward the City Centre. B&J headed toward the fitness center for a swim and I took the bus down to the Barbizon district to look around and do a little shopping. The Barbizon district is the oldest part of Plymouth, some of the buildings dating back to Elizabethan times. While this area sustained some damage during the war, it wasn�t hit nearly as hard as the City Centre was, and when they did the repairs they did them very carefully so the area has retained its history. The streets were narrow and there were many quaint little shops selling lots of tatty souvenirs to tourists. There is also a glass works down on the waterfront that you can go into and watch as they blow glass. They also sell not so tatty glassware and porcelain, Waterford, Wedgewood, Doulton, etc
We met back up for lunch and then took a ferry over to the village of Cawsands, which is back in Cornwall. That turned out to be more fun than the helicopter ride. It was a windy day and the sea was quite rough. Our ferry was one of the small intrepid little passenger ferries that you see a lot of around this coastline. Anyway, like idiots we all stood up front in the bow section and the ride over was kind of a cross between the Run-a-Way Mine Train and the Roaring Rapid rides at Six Flags. We all got wet, I would have gotten even wetter but Bob stood in front of me and blocked a lot of the spray. I was afraid I might get seasick but I had just had a pint of Flowers Bitter with my lunch so I guess that good English beer held my stomach in place. The ride back was anticlimactic as we were riding with the wind instead of heading into it and was really quite tame. All we had was the spectacular Devon Coast line and Plymouth Harbor to keep us entertained.
That evening we went out to dinner with Bob�s boss and his wife. We went to a neat little French Bistro type restaurant that if you didn�t look out the window, you would could have sworn you were in the French Quarter of New Orleans, complete with Jazz music playing in the background. We went back to their house for coffee and I learned that Royal Navy sea stories are exactly the same as U.S. Navy sea stories.
Sunday morning I woke up with a sore throat and the opening act of a major cold. I decided to have a day of rest and waved B&J off as they went back to Cornwall, this time to Polperro. I stayed in bed, read, blew my nose and sneezed.
On Monday Bob had meetings so Jen and I went down to the City Centre, strolled around, did a little shopping and then headed out to the Hoe to the Plymouth Dome, a museum dedicated to the history of Plymouth through the ages. The Hoe is the old waterfront area, and at the West Hoe, where the museum is located, is the Citadel, a large fortress built by Charles II, a lighthouse that had stood on the Eddistone Rocks, a major shipping hazard, for 128 years before the rocks crumbled away and it had to be dismantled, and a park. According to the video we saw at the museum, during WWII in the summer months one of the military bands used to give concerts at this park every evening before the nightly bombings began and people came up here to dance. I guess that was one way to thumb your nose at the bombers. It was also at this Citadel that Sir Francis Drake was playing bowls when the Spanish Armada was sighted and is reported to have said he had time to finish his game before going out to beat them, in fact he couldn�t get his fleet out of the harbor because of the tide! About four p.m. we met up with Bob and headed off for London.