Oh my! The days are getting away from me! So much to do, so much to see! My thighs are just burning all the time now! So much walking up and down hills and climbing stairs. What a work out! The last 2 days have been busy so this will probably be a longer blog, so bear with me. And you can skip the fun history junk I throw in too if you want. Also, I've been piecing it together for a couple of days so if it seems kind of jumbled that could be why :o)
But anyways, yesterday (Monday the 17th) was such a busy/crazy/fun day! We were on a field trip from 9:30 am to 5 pm! It felt like a walk through a fairy tale more than anything, it was pretty cool!
We started the day at Caernarfon (which kind of sounds like ka-narv-in). The beautiful little town in north Wales is home to the Caernarfon castle which has quite the history! The history that some of you may know about is how this castle is how King Edward I gave his first born son to Wales to be their prince. He did this after defeating Wales and it is now tradition that the eldest son of the King (or Queen in today's case) becomes the Prince of Wales. So in 1969 Prince Charles became Prince Charles in this VERY castle... way cool! And if it ever comes about that Queen Elizabeth should die, then Prince William will be officially named the new Prince of Wales! (I always wondered how Princess Di came to be the Princess of Wales being from the family of the Queen of England! Now I know, and so do you! So Caernorfon was a very cool place to visit and I highly recommend it to anyone who travels to Wales, and also if you want to see the pictures be sure to check out my facebook "Wales #1" album!
Next, we came to another castle in Cricieth (kind of sounds like crick-ith). This castle was much less glamorous compared to Caernarfon. Caernarfon is a Normal caslte whereas the Cricieth castle is a Welsh castle. When walking up to this castle it was like walking through a passage in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". We walked through a wooded archway to a journey up to the castle. It sat on a high embankment looking over the sea. It was very very beautiful, words cannot describe just how beautiful the view was in every direction. (plenty of pictures on facebook just not the same tho!)
After going to 2 castles, we headed to the slate mines in Llechwedd. This was a very educational part of our day so I won't bother telling you everything. There was tons of information about the mines but basically it is one of the huge industries here in Northern Wales.
After the mines we went to the third castle of the day called Dolwyddelan (again no idea on how to say this one). This castle came with a funny story from Tecwyn and we were forewarned to be aware of the crazy lady that runs the castle who indeed has a shotgun... We were also told Tecwyn told her there were only 15 of us and that we should try to blend together because there were actually 22 of us. So we hiked up the mucky hillside (I understood why we didnt go the day before). This castle was originally on the schedule for our field trip on Sunday but because of the rain we didn't go until Monday. This castle was also a Welsh castle and much less glamorous than Caernarfon but still very cool. We climbed to the top which was quite an adventure in itself. The sun was setting so there wasn't a ton of light to go around so walking up the very dark staircase was very interesting. I held the rope for dear life with my right hand used my left hand as a guide on the wall and took baby steps, so I wouldnt trip and fall to my death. Needless to say I made it to the spectacular view at the top (again lots of pics on facebook).
After the short bus ride back, some of the girls and I decided to make some pasta. This turned out delicious and was a great end to a great day! Then we went for a little stroll around town. We found the train station and just kind of wandered. It was actually really fun!
I'm going to end this post here and do another blog for yesterday which was also an adventure... I'm holding true to the name of the blog!
~Amy
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