Wales

The night before I went to Wales, I was asked to go out by Erin & some nice girl I just met, Jaya. We went out to this Latin pub where we met a handful of very drunk accountants, some from Wales, some British, and some rugby-playing Kiwis, who felt compelled to show Jaya & how to scrub as you would in rugby. Interesting. Then we went to another pub/club and danced, and ran away from guys getting too close to us dancing. Fun. That was Friday night in a nutshell.

Ok, so I put on my alarm clock for 5am so I could wake up and get to the bus station @ 7am to go to Wales. Denysha calls me at 6:56am saying, "Girl, you better get here soon, we're leaving in 4 minutes." HOLY LORD! I've never gotten ready in 5 minutes before, but I did...and I called back and begged the tour lady to wait for me. Mind you, this bus station is a good 30 min. walk from my flat. So I tried hailing a cab. And failed, so I RAN to the tube station, changed trains like it was MY JOB, and started getting so upset that I started crying a bit. I've never been so frustrated. But, bless that woman, at 7:30am I caught up with them SOMEHOW, and went to Wales.

Just a note: Welsh is a language based on Celtic roots & Roman influence. Aka, it's one messed up language. I can't read it for the life of me. "W"s sound like "uh" or "ooh" so, good=gwd. WEIRD. Thank god everything's in english, too.

It wasn't that long of a drive (compared to Cornwall...), maybe 4 hours max. But we stopped at a few spots before we got to Cardiff around 6pm. First, we stopped at the Roman barracks & the ampitheater in Caerleon. These places are, well, old, and mostly grassy fields with rock foundations. It was really neat, but took a lot of the imagination. Then we headed off to eat lunch (I was good & had a salad) at Caerphilly Castle. It's kinda interesting, because you can tell that it's been built by a BUNCH of different kind of styles...you got Norman, Crusade-esque, etc etc. But it's magnificent. One of the towers is missing one part of the circular wall, and falling over to one side. I loved that. And there were walls inside walls inside walls. We couldn't go into the chapel b/c of a wedding being held.
But it was quite the photo-taking experience. Eliana, Denysha, & I kinda went a little nuts on this trip with taking pictures. More to come on those some other day...
Then off to the Welsh Life Museum. This place was a huge outside exhibit of Welsh living over the last 500+ years. Big. So, when we first got there, I caught wind that one of the housing exhibits were celtic huts. If you know me, you might know that I am very much obsessed with celtic culture, and I was in my element. No, but really, I was giddy. We took tons of pictures. And then we headed over to the more "colonial period" houses, and bought ourselves bags of Welsh cakes. I HIGHLY recommend them, FABULOUS! Like scones, only sweeter & more pancakier. We headed off to the modern castle & gardens, where it looked kinda like the Secret Garden in winter. That's when my inner photographer/artist came out.
Then we drove to Cardiff, Europe's youngest capital cities. It's small, and a lot of youth are here. We were staying in a sports center/hostel. Very clean & nice (hotel-ish), but like a maze! It took us 20 min. to find our room. Then we napped for an hour.

We decided to go out to the Cardiff nightlife to see what it had to offer.
Heads up, we were with a bunch of Un.Wisconsin kids, they were nice kids, but I felt like they were doing their own thing. Still nice kids, though.
Cardiff nightlife, in an image, is like NYC on Halloween night after the parade. To those that aren't knowledgeable in NYC culture, that means: hell opened up and let loose. People walking around without coats (IT WAS FREEZING!!!!), trashed out of their minds, walking on the streets in scores, NUTS. So, us girls tried to duck out ASAP, and we sweet-talked our way with a bouncer into this little club called Moloko for free. We danced the whole night, it was nice. And because none of us had the desire, nor the money, to buy drinks, we were aware of all of the weird things around us ALL NIGHT. We were trying to be nice & friendly with the locals, but these 2 guys came over to dance with us, which was fine then, but then grabbed my butt (think full grab), and then Denysha. That's when things stopped being fun, so we called it a night, at 11:30pm. Got lost getting back to the center. Walked back through hell. And slept hard.

Full English Breakfast at 8am. Passed by the Brecon Beacon National Park. Left for the Big Pit Mining Museum at 8:30am. What is that, you ask? Basically, we got to go into & under a coal mine on a tour. It was awesome. We put on the hardhats, the belts, and scuttled about 300 feet underground. Learned a lot about coal mining. And our guide was adorable, he was this old bubbly Welsh man. Couldn't understand half of what he was saying, but we got the point.
Into the bus. Went to Cistercian Tintern Abbey. This abbey's in the Wye Valley, a very picturesque place that Woodsworth wrote all about. The abbey reminded me vaguely of the Glastonbury abbey, but only b/c it was the ruins. This abbey wasn't so dismantled, though. Most was missing was the roof, floor, the window glass, and some walls. Very aesthetic, but pretty at the same time. Denysha & I saw 2 doves fly above us onto one of the cathedral walls, and that was pretty inspiring. Took lots of more pictures. The grass was so green on the floor, and the sky was so blue for the rooftop. And some of the cemetery stones in the chapel part were still there. COOL!

Drove home, slept most of the way, and said farewell to our Wisconsin mates.
Got back to the flat to frantically study for a marketing midterm........now. WISH ME LUCK!