Portmeirion, day 2

Yesterday, Wednesday, it rained for the first half of the day, so I did most of my touristy things in the afternoon and evening.

In the morning, I had breakfast in the village down at the hotel because the shops and cafes didn't open till 10 or so.

Around 11 a.m., I stopped in the Prisoner shop and bought a little Portmeirion travel bag. I wanted to get cookies and fudges for everyone back home, but I would need to get four boxes, and I just don't have the room in my luggage.

The rain finally let up around 2 p.m. (I had spent most of the morning in my room reading that Cure bio), so I headed down the road in the village to a cafe. Got a tuna salad on a roll; it was more like a tuna sandwich -- really good.

After lunch, I wandered around and took as many pics as I could, including on this hiking trail where I was looking for this plant with three-foot-wide leaves. I was snapping so many pictures that my battering konked out after about two hours.

I retired to my room and put on channel 5 at five o'clock for some Portmeirion programming, but I messed up -- they aired it at four, so I showered and hung out till 6, when they aired an old Prisoner episode. It was a good one, where No. 6 runs for No. 2's office -- lots of exteriors shot here in Portmerion . . . God, the producers did a great job of utilizing the land here!

At 7:15 I had the shuttle pick me up for dinner down at the castle (didn't feel like walking the half-mile or so). At the castle, there's a fenced-off field with a bunch of black sheep, some with horns. As I was taking pictures, a number bahhed and they approached the fence, rather aggressively, I thought. Weird.

For dinner, I had crab and some sort of mayonnaise concoction on a hard piece of bread for starters. The main course was duck over red cabbage, with mashed potatoes. To drink, I had a 250ml glass of chardonnay (I figured, if you're gonna be a fancy-schmancy place, might as well go the whole nine). For desert, I had pecans in a four-inch-wide pie crust, with a scoop of ice cream on the side. I should've taken a picture of it. Also on the plate were these edible colourings in swirls, and sticking out of the ice cream was a red oblong circle measuring six inches. It was almost too pretty to eat, but I wolfed down the plate regardless.

Real quick: the sun sets in England around 10 p.m. this time of the year. WHAT!?!

I went to bed around 11, after watching a documentary on Pete Best, a footballer who I read about at Manchester United. Kind of a tragic figure. A child prodigy, apparently. He started playing professionally in his teens, but he was so good the fame went to his head. Later in life he went bankrupt and became an alcoholic -- liver problems ending his life at 59. On the more entertaining side, at the Manchester United stadium, there's a quote of him saying, "I spent most of my money on birds, booze and cars. The rest I squandered away."