calm
kissycat1000 and myself went to Blackpool and stayed in a quaint little B&B, whose proprietress reminded me very strongly of Roz from Monsters Inc. <nasal drawl>"Would you like a cup of tea..? Okay I'll just bring out two cups anyway.."</nasal drawl> That hilarity aside, we had a poor night's sleep in the extremely soft double bed pushed up against the wall. The breakfast was spot on, though :)Saturday morning, after juggling cars around, we set off for Blackburn to go ice skating with
psyche_71, microchip and others. We didn't stay long because the boots were killing us and we had a lot of walking to do later in the day. After popping in to a local store to buy myself a coat (I hadn't brought anything other than a t-shirt to wear and I needed one) we headed back to Blackpool.On the way to the Pleasure Beach we saw some KFC imitations:
It's like KFC, 'cept it's Rubbish!
Hey, here's another! But this one's Sh..
I also got accosted by some.. enterprising young men. They deftly lifted a fiver off me to throw rings over a pole which I had very little chance of success with. I drew the line when they asked for a further "note of any type".. translation: £5, £10, £20 etc.. to try again with the pole closer still. I walked away at this point. Damn them. I wasn't ready!
Still, we got into the pleasure beach for the bargain half-price of £15. Quite a few of the rides weren't working though, and I chickened out of the Pepsi-Max Big One.
kissycat1000 did do an amazing job of taking me on the terrifying Revolution, then onto a horse-ride type rollercoaster I can only describe as 'The Ball Crusher'. There was a guy on the track next to us uttering the same gutteral whimpering with every jolt as we pulled in to the station while kissycat1000 was hysterically giggling. Oh what it is to be a girl, huh?I decided I wanted to see the tower (after all, what is the point of coming to Blackpool without seeing the tower, huh?) and proceeded to walk towards it. This was hampered somewhat by the bad weather that was coming in, the wind and rain:
A bit wet and windy, with the tower in the background
There were lots of trite shops and hotels that looked like shops or something out of vegas with their flashing lights.. ugh..
kissycat1000 had fun sifting through them for amusing trinkets and found a 'kitty hat' but despite trying it on decided not to buy it..Well, after walking and discovering the.. 'amusing' effect of roads perpendicular to the sea have on the wind (think wind-tunnel) we finally got to the tower, but it was a bit dark by this time. Also, I was disappointed to realise the tower is actually built on top of a building and not directly attached to the ground:
The Blackpool Tower
After a long walk back (this time against the wind) we managed to get to the Casino, where I had wanted to go for a while. We were pretty tired and aching by this point. We had to become members to get in, which included photographic ID and all sorts. Inside it was interesting watching the croupiers and eventually the poker tournament started, which I had decided not to partake in because I would have had to stay until I got knocked out (which looking at the style of game wouldn't have taken very long. They mostly seemed to finish betting before the flop). The other games looked interesting but in the end I decided to keep my money rather than spend it without really knowing what I was doing.
Finally we decided to walk back to the B&B where I took a photo to show just the effect of that short journey on my hair:
Blackpool hair
But we decided that on reflection we could stay in the small cramped B&B, get little sleep but get a cooked breakfast and then have to drive back.. or we could leave now (and get a quiet drive back in the dark), get a proper night's sleep in a King-size bed and not have to drive anywhere.. so that's what we did :)
Lessons for future reference: never book a night in a place unless you have something specific you want to do in the area on the day after, and always make sure the place we book has adequate bed arrangements - i.e. not against a wall and preferably not just a double.
Time for a nice lazy day of maybe pub lunch and watching stuff.. :)
