After Ireland it was on to Wales. Our first stop was one of the major castles in the area, Caernarfon castle.
(Michael) We were really excited, but also really exhausted, so we snoozed in our car in the parking lot for a while to make sure we fully enjoyed the castle.
(Amanda) It was huge. And the greatest part was that there were no ropes or anything to keep you from going certain places; we were free to explore anywhere we pleased...and we did.
Michael practicing his archery skills
And me practicing my sword defense.
The inside of a turret. Unlike the castle itself the walkways didn't survive the test of time. Or maybe it was on purpose...if you hid one of those openings behind a tapestry you would have a great way of getting rid of any unwanted guests.
Michael on top of one of the towers
The stairway down. These people definitely didn't waste space with their stairwells, and I am guessing they had some killer calves (and not the animal kind, although I guess they could have had some of those too)
The official mascot of the Royal Regiment of Wales. Cute.
Me addressing my subjects, informing them of my
decision to halt the pasty tax forthwith.
They were overjoyed.
(Michael) In one part of the castle they had a little documentary...The Eagle and the Dragon. Sort of cheesy (they had one actor play different roles of people in the area throughout different time periods) but cool to be learning about the history while you're actually inside one of the stone rooms.
(Amanda) On our way out were stopped at the gift shop and found this little gem.
It's all about the eye to body ratio. It really was a lot more heart-wrenching in real life.
For lunch we enjoyed faggots and mushy peas. If ever I open a restaurant I am going to use the word "traditional" on whatever dish I need to sell the most of...I am sure we're not the only suckers out there.
Wikipedia: "Faggots are a traditional dish in the UK,[1][2] especially South and Mid Wales and the Midlands of England.[3][4][5] It is made from meat off-cuts and offal, especially pork.[3]
A faggot is traditionally made from pig's heart, liver and fatty belly
meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and
sometimes bread crumbs. The mixture is shaped in the hand into little balls, wrapped round with caul fat (the omentum membrane from the pig's abdomen), and baked."
Got to love learning these things after the fact. To us it just looked like ground beef in gravy, and tasted much the same.
The peas turned out to be absolutely delicious and weren't mushy at all. If fact, they were my favorite part.
Yummmm.
(Michael) After wandering around a little bit, we knew that we had just about used up all of our allotted time in Wales. So we were off to Bath. The ride was really beautiful, lots of green fields and roads winding around the rocky coast. However always in the back of my mind was the fear that we were heading the complete wrong direction. I believe we had several detours and asked a bunch of people for directions. A lot of times after talking with someone, I would look to Amanda for a translation (partly due to the accents, and partly due to the fact that my brain can only handle a certain number of roundabout directions).
After many hours we were once again racing against time/daylight to find our hotel. We must have gone back and forth across the same road a thousand times, it just seemed like no amount of directions could help us with this one. But using process of elimination we were finally able to get to the dirt road that led us to this quaint hotel.
(Of course, this isn't what we first saw since it was quite dark by the time we got there)
I guess they were going to have a wedding for an American couple there that weekend which is why they had the flag flying out front.
We really had to hand it to the service there, the staff was friendly, accommodating, and even bumped us up to one of their nicer rooms.
Since we couldn't see anything when we first got there, the morning was a delightful surprise. We loved the gardens and the peaceful location. It was one of our favorite places as far as atmosphere.
From that nice commentary I must now go to the dark side of our experience around Bath. I feel as if it were my final exam as far as driving in Europe since it had all of the following tricky things...
-Only had Rick Steve's crudely drawn map of the city
-Narrow Roads
-Lot of pedestrians, cars, people on bikes
-Lots of roundabouts
-Complicated downtown, forcing you to make quick split-second decisions
-Strange signs
I do have to say though, we did run across some cool little areas tucked away in the "suburbs".
One of the happiest parts of the trip (for me) was when we found the Hertz office and dropped off our car. I felt so free and so blessed that I was able to bring that vehicle back in one piece. I am also pleased to report that I didn't accidentally drive on the wrong side of the road (I was really worried about that one). So I figure you have to take victories where you can find them. Also, we would have missed out on many adventures without our little blue car, so overall it was sort of a mixed bag.
We sort of had to rush through Bath, which was sort of okay because it wasn't as festive as some of the other places we'd been. There were some neat spots though, such as the Cresent....
(Amanda) haha without a car to hold all our gear we had to pack everything into our hiking packs...which is why Michael's is looking so big at the moment.
And of course, the baths themselves....
We got our audioguides and, even though the lady at the front desk said we needed a couple hours to go through the whole site, we were museum pros by then and quickly hit all of the most notable parts.
You weren't supposed to touch the water, but come on, you can't come all the way to some Roman baths and NOT touch the water, right? It was a neat place, I really liked how they had people roaming around in period costumes. Nice touch.
After that we walked around some of the city, but it was really crowded so we didn't get too far (also, we were disappointed about how mall-like one of the main areas was with American clothing stores etc.).
Having seen sign after sign for famous Cornish pasties, we knew that we couldn't leave without trying a few.
While we were waiting for our train back to London, I learned about how they use different cuts/fork pokes in the pasties to identify the filling.
It was interesting coming back to London, I felt like all our adventures made us a lot wiser this time around. We were definitely not as intimidated now.
First order of business was to get to our hotel. We had chosen a place close to the King Cross Station so we could get to the airport quickly. Because of the Diamond Jubilee that weekend, it was tough to find something available, but we were luckily able to get this very tiny room. It was our first experience with a shared bathroom.
That evening we went to Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater. It was the first time either one of us had been to a show, so we were very excited...and also maybe a little overdressed compared to many other people. But we figure it's best to shoot high in cases like that.
We got there early enough to sit and appreciate some of cool decorations around the theater...
Once again, it's all about the ceilings.
We loved it. Great music, great sets, and great acting, it was definitely an evening well spent. My personal favorite was how they had a bunch of the props mechanically rotate to fit into the barricade.
It was a little chaotic getting back to the hotel after the show was over since it was raining and the subway was completely packed.
The next morning we had our English breakfast...,
And then we were off to get to church. However, we hadn't planned in the fact that many of the bus routes were going to be shut down for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. And this is where I say thank you to the kind lady who came by to tell us that our bus wouldn't be coming since we probably would have waited there a long time if not for her. We quickly ran to the subway and tried our to get to the church a different way, but once again we were significantly late. We had missed taking the sacrament the last two weeks, so we were really bummed that we were once again going to miss it. But a modern-day miracle happened when we realized that they were getting ready to sing the sacrament hymn. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had trouble with the Jubilee public transportation.
For the rest of the day, we decided to relax and soak in our last few moments in England. We walked through Hyde Park and past some of the Jubilee celebrations going on by the river. It was pretty rainy and we felt bad for the queen since she did not look very happy being paraded around in the cold from ship to ship (even if the announcers were exclaiming that "the queen is just beaming!").
Amanda found her new dream occupation...
After strolling around for a while, we decided to get some final pasties for the night and scones (of course) for an early breakfast the next day.
The rest is history. We were sad to pack up and head to the airport and even more sad when the Heathrow airport security made us throw away our Loch Ness blackberry jam and the muscle cream that Amanda had purchased in Wales for her mother. We took one last picture *sniff* for the memories.
At least we could drown our sorrow with scones.
And there you have it, a trip so amazing it took us four months to document it all.
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