Today was orientation day for our stay in Falmouth.  After sleeping in late, because yesterday was the proverbial very long day, we decided to begin with a walk away from town up to a Sainsbury, which we think is the largest nearby grocery store.  It was in fact a decent size store and even though this was only a scouting trip we did buy a few essentials, particularly some items we thought we might need for lunch.  After said lunch we walked in the other direction, toward the middle of town center, to see what was there and what was open.  It was a revelation.  As part of the process of deciding what town to use as our base for exploring a region, we always take a stroll down High Street (or whatever the main shopping street is called) using Google Street View.  In the case of Falmouth we saw a nice old downtown with an interesting array of shops, pubs and restaurants.  This "tour" played a large role in our decision to base our Cornwall stay here.  It is always interesting to actually arrive in a place and see how close to reality our research was.

In the case of Falmouth, Street View wildly understated the quality and quantity of interesting shops.  Also a revelation was the number of people out and about on High Street and in the stores and restaurants.  We had assumed that we were in "low season" here in Falmouth and the shops would be deserted if they were even open.  Seriously.  It's 50 degrees and forecast to rain for the next week.  What is wrong with these people?  Maybe this is just a weekend phenomenon; we will see on Monday.

Our foray provided us with valuable intelligence on pubs, bakeries, restaurants and fish and chips shops (always important in a British seaside town) and gelato (not quite the weather for it yet, but it will be).  We put this knowledge to good use this evening with a fine dinner at Gem Fish and Chips, just up the hill from our place.  This also allowed us to reacquaint ourselves with using malt vinegar on chips (better than salt) and the qualitative difference between cod and haddock (we both liked the haddock a little better, it seemed less oily).  In all, we now feel oriented locally and ready to go forth and explore Cornwall.  We have already begun our research on hikes, golf courses and distilleries.