Hooray for Internet! I thoroughly enjoy being able to get all of this posted, not only so that I can remember it, but so that my family knows I'm still alive. Internet has been dodgy, to say the least. For most of this past week I've only been able to use it on our coach (which very conveniently had wifi!). Then we came to Wales and everything changed. Turns out Ireland-based wifi doesn't work in Wales, not to mention the fact that we got a new bus with no wifi (and no legroom and no luggage room and...well, more about that later). Long story short (too late for that), Internet is scarce. Which makes me all the more grateful for the times that I do have it!
Ireland spoiled us. That's the long and the short of it. We stayed in beautiful hotels and had a giant coach with two seats for each of us, and internet most of the time. Wales has proven much more adventurous.
Now, on to our adventures.
Today the plan was to hike Mount Snowdon. Snowdon is the tallest mountain in Great Britain, which is not to say that it's remarkably tall. I was very excited for this excursion into wild Wales, but unfortunately it was pouring rain when we woke up, so we didn't get to hike. So, being flexible, we did what we do best and changed our plans.
It actually ended up being a good thing, because we got to go see another of Edward I's castles: Caernarfon. And guess what? It's not actually a castle. It is, instead, a palace. King Edward built it to be his own special place in Wales, but I guess the weather didn't agree with him because he only came twice for a period of two weeks. It was a marvelous castle--excuse me, palace--though. Like Beaumaris, it shows signs of never being fully completed, but only from the inside. From the outside it is imposing and grand, meant to scare the Welsh into submission. From the inside, there are walls that abruptly end and random stones jutting out of walls in strategic places so that someone with more money and more time could eventually build more stone buildings inside. This never actually happened.
Caernarfon was unique in a lot of ways. Here were the highlights:
-the arrow slits. I know, I know. Seen one, seen 'em all, right? Actually, no. These arrow slits were deceptive little things. From the outside it looks like there are only a few, but each arrow slit had three different openings in the wall from the inside, one going straight through the slit(the one you could see from the outside), and two coming diagonally from either side that were invisible from outside. Three archers were arrow slit getting three times the results. Tricksy people, those English!
-the corridors. This castle was built in the hopes that any invading persons who made it inside the castle itself would get hopelessly lost. There are trick chambers and winding stairways that go in three different directions. Basically, if you were an enemy, you weren't coming out alive without help. We had a lot of fun roaming these corridors. This is one place you want to schedule penty of time for--we had two hours and only made it through half of the castle! (Though that also included the tour. Another hour would have been sufficient.)
-indoor plumbing. Saw it myself--the holes in the walls where the lead pipes used to be. In medieval times, people didn't know much about lead poisoning.
-the towers had wooden bridges a couple of stories up so that you could walk around the entire castle on the upper stories. These were all incredibly picturesque (and also, as so many other things have been, strangely reminiscent of Zelda games.)
That's another thing I learned today: much of their society was run by teenage boys, since you weren't expected to live much longer than thirty. All I have to say to that is this: no wonder things were so messed up. Also, according to this tour guide, the idea that spiral stairs always go up clockwise to aid right-handed swordsmen is just a myth--and indeed, most of the stairways in Caernarfon go up counter-clockwise. I don't know if this is just a traditional discrepancy between the Irish and the Welsh (because several Irish tour guides insisted that this was fact) or if someone somewhere is trying to deceive me.
After Caernarfon, we did a bit of town-hopping. Alexis and I found this little Welsh library where we spent some time trying to decipher Welsh. (I also may or may not have spent some time with a Wales guidebook trying to identify the building the Doctor always appears in front of when he's in Cardiff. I was successful and will be taking a picture with it at the first available opportunity (tomorrow night? We get to Cardiff tomorrow!)
Stop number two was a quaint little town in the mountains with some gorgeous scenery. We stopped for fish and chips (Cod this time, which I'm less fond of than Halibut) and took some pictures. There was also a lot of gorgeous scenery in between: rock-strewn mountains with waterfalls every thirty feet, the occasional escaped sheep inn the middle of the road, an armada of seagulls that had taken over several small boats in hopes of mischief-making,and parks. Did I mention that I found out what was missing from my childhood? I never got to play in a park that was built in front of an ancient castle ruin.
We are now in a hostel in Bala. We walked down to Bala Lake (the only major landform in the area) and were treated to beautiful views and eventually some rain. Perhaps the best part about today? My feet were still dry when I got back to the hostel.
I guess that's everything. I'm still working on the picture problem. Right now I'm mostly hoping for a computer lab of some sort in London, though I know that's stretching things a bit. You'll have to take my word for it, I guess: the pictures are lovely.
Happy Second-to-Last Day of June! Unless something amazing happens before I go to bed, I'll check in with you all again from Cardiff tomorrow night!
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