Chycara, Truro Markets, Glendurgen Maze, Trelissick, and The Eden Project

Saturday morning we headed to Truro for the Farmers Market and Lemon Street market. The stands were a bit sparse but we found some goodies: bread, duck burgers, duck eggs (had to try these two!), ale mustard... 

Here were the two pieces of artwork I thought were cool at the Lemon Street Market:

We got some bad coffee and waxy donuts and were on our way. Next stop was Glendurgan. This sign represents that Cornwall is all about "Eat Local":

The highlight of Glendurgan was the huge shrub maze. Chris' height was definitely an advantage in this endeavor. :)

We made it! It was funny, at first Ethan would pretty much pick the dead ends every time. :)

Here's the beach at Durgan, where the paths through the garden funnel down:

They had these free wicker head pieces for the kids to stick leaves in which were a big hit. We collected these red leaves from the next National Trust garden we hit (and where we had lunch), Trelissick:

View of the Falmouth inlet:

Back at the place we stayed, Chycara, we played some tennis (or shall I say "we attempted to hit some balls"). We had good fun and definitely got our money's worth out of our £1 tennis rackets from Poundland. Ethan kept accidentally sending his racket flying (his is the green one with lots of scratches). Chris was convinced that his racket wasn't strung as tight as some of the others and tried to slyly switch his orange racket with Hailey's pink one. Which did not go unnoticed, that girl notices everything! I had a good laugh over that one when she got upset and kept pointing to the racket, indicating that she wanted hers back.

A force to be reckoned with!

He hit the ball!

This place we stayed, Chycara, was awesome! They have this huge well-groomed property with an indoor pool and tennis courts. We stayed in the garden lodge, a two bedroom place with kitchen and 2 baths that we had to ourselves! In the bathroom was a sign that said something like "Please do not flush tampons, sanitary pads or tea bags down these toilets". Haha, only in England!

Sunday morning we played some more tennis (but realized we needed coffee) and then went for a woodland walk. We used the laminated map they had to locate the birdhouses, owl houses and badger sets. And collected new leaves for our head pieces.

Kind of looks Lord of the Rings-ish:

On the way back, we sucked it up and paid an arm and a leg to go to The Eden Project. I attempted to use my expired 25% off coupon but ended up using a 15% off one that the nice owner of Chycara gave me when I checked out (he gave me a huge Cornwall attractions coupon book for our family which was really nice). The Eden Project was very unique (and educational) though, we felt that it was worth it! Chris and I rolled our eyes at some of the uber hippy write-ups (like the one about the giant granite seed sculpture sybolizing life yadda yadda and about their stances on improving the world for future generations etc) but they had some really cool exhibits. 

The Mediterranean biodime on the right and the Rainforest biodome on the left had plants and trees and flowers etc that grow in those areas and information about all of the different things. It was amazing how they could recreate these environments in these controlled biodome climates:

Cool wicker pathways for kids:

The Rainforest biodome was really hot and took a surprisingly long time to wind our way through. We were all sweaty and had to get ice cream afterwards. Smart move on their part having an ice cream stand right by the exit.

Huge bee and drawers of bees:

Beer and Brewing area. It killed Chris that they hadn't harvested the hops and they were all dried up.

They also had this trash man sculpture that showed all of the electrical waste that average person has in their lifetime.