Overall I would call our Wales weekend pretty success and a lot of fun, but definitely had a rough start.
DAY 1
Let's rewind back to Saturday morning, I had everything packed and decided to get up at 6am and head to the tube at 6:50am. When I attempted to take the elevator down, living on the 9th floor justifies using the elevator, I waited about 3 minutes and realized it wasn't going to come. After then going down about 11 flights of stairs, the first floor here is the ground floor so it's a little different, I got to the bottom and one of the people from my group was down there and she said that the German students on the fourth floor were moving out. So then her and I took off walking to the tube, hoping everyone else would be leaving soon also because of needing to be there by 7:30am. We got to our normal tube station and made it all the way to the platform when one of the tube station attendants came down and told us the Bakerloo line wasn't operating at the moment because a guy was under the tube at one of the stops up ahead. So we quickly decided to walk to the next station, Waterloo, and get on another line, at the moment hoping another line went to the Baker street station. As we waited on the lift to take up back up and it didn't seem to be coming, and it wasn't, so we then had to take the stairs. (I'm hating stairs by this point already). There were 84 stairs, there are signs that are nice enough to list the number of stairs you get to go up. Then on the way we looked at our tube maps and found a line that made it to Baker station. At this point we called the others and told them because they were behind us and they would definitely be late if they tried to do the same thing we did. We knew we would be cutting it close on time. We manged to come out of the exit and get to the meeting point with about 2 minutes to spare, not how I like to usually do it, but a perfect example of why you should always leave some extra time for issues.
Oddly enough we managed to leave a little after 8am, so we actually would have been fine. I would estimate there were about 70 of us on the trip, so quite a few people, but we had a lot of fun and got to know some kids from other groups too. For the first part of the trip I tried to sleep, but it was hard to get comfortable. After about an hour and a half we took a 40 minute break at a "truck stop". There truck stops are very upscaled compared to the ones in the states. There was a Costa Coffee (popular coffee place in the UK), Burger King (they really like BK here), hot meals place, convenient store (simiar to how the entire truck stop would be for us), and a random store that had like clothes and various items like you would find in a normal store. They also had a casino room. I was pretty impressed. I ended up ordering a hamburger and ice cream from BK. The ice cream was actually pretty good, but the hamburger was extremely tiny. It is even smaller than the $1 hamburger on the menu back in the states, BK here doesn't really have the dollar menu. Then we got back on the bus and continued on our way.
When we got just outside the boarder our tour guide announced it so we would pay attention. The picture up above is the bridge we crossed into Wales. The strange thing was that you pay to cross into Wales, but not to leave Wales. As we continued on we saw the road signs in Welsh and English. Only about 20% of the people speak Welsh, but it is definitely an interesting language. Our first stop was at the Roman Barracks. It was pretty cool to see, and the fact that they are still standing today. Our tour guide explained how 8 guys were in each tiny room and she pointed out the next to it where they kept there gear. There was another room that had a circular formation that they cooked with. The most interesting part was the toilets. They had running water and a contraption set up in a make shift way similar to how toilets function today. Knowing so many years ago they already had that figured out is astonishing.
Across the street/ parking lot was the Amphitheater. This was a cool sight to actually get to see. Back then they use to have gladiator fights or fights with animals here. This was the largest amphitheater and was able to seat up to 6,000 people. Most of the entertainment took place here.
After we left there our next stop was in Cardiff, the capital, and we got to eat lunch and then tour a castle. There were many stores and places to eat, but there was also a grocery store that many of us ended up finding food in. I ended up getting British chicken from the deli that was actually pretty tasty, they ran out of American, and we wondered around the store amazed by the signs.
After finishing lunch we went and toured the castle. She told us a couple crazy stories about how they had killed a couple people there, pretty brutal. One story she told us was about a guy named Gilbert, but people called him Red Gilbert because he had red hair and a red beard. He had a wife who did not really want to marry him, but was forced to. She was in love with another guy, her cousin actually. She had been secretly seeing him and one day he told a priest about it, thinking that because of him being a priest it would be kept a secret, but the priest actually worked for Gilbert and he told him what was going on. Out of anger and rage he ended up decapitating the priest and murdering his wife's cousin.
Next up was the Welch Open Air Museum. It was a pretty good experience. We got to see what life was like for the Welch people and how they lived. It was cool because they had people in different areas that we could talk to and they could tell us or explain anything if we had any questions. They seemed to have lived pretty simple lives. It reminded me a lot of Kansas how they lived because of the farming and what not. Granted by this point it was about 5pm and I had been up since 6am so I was a little tired and ready to take a break.
Finally after the museum we got to go to our hotel. Which everything we did was at least a 45 minute bus ride or more. We ended up staying in Swansea at a Premier Inn which was pretty nice. But once we got checked into our room we went into town or the town center to find something to eat because there wasn't much by where we stayed. So there were 9 of us that ended up wondering around looking for somewhere to eat. We came across a pub/grill with a dance floor that seemed good. We all managed to find meals for under $5 so it was perfect. I actually had fish and chips (fries) and ended up ordering a Pimms (alcohol) and sadly ordering my first legal drink, and I didn't get carded. I was slightly bummed. But the drink was actually pretty good as was the food. After we finished eating around 8:30 we went outside and were going to decide what to do from there. We ended up standing on the sidewalk for about 30 minutes just people watching.
We actually were on a street similar to Aggieville in the sense that it was lined with bars. In the UK people start around 7, which is a huge difference that what we are used to. But as we stood there we saw various bachelor/bachelorette parties or stag/hen parties going around to all the different bars. It was a sight to see. Not only were there many of them, but they were themed. We saw one where they looked like fairies, police officers, orange outfits, and Hawaiian themed. These people went all out. Then the random people we saw were very dressed up compared to us, the women looked like they were ready for prom and the guy all had button up shirts and jeans on. We stuck out quite a bit, but we were extremely intrigued by all of these people. We actually asked the cops standing on the street what exactly was going on, and they also told us this was a calm night, so I can't imagine a crazy night on this street. It seemed like a popular place to be on a Saturday night. Then around 9pm we decided we were going to leave and as we were doing this we watched a girl get carried by two of her friends, she was already beyond drunk. We walked down the street to the taxi rank, safe taxis, and we all got in two cabs and told the drivers what our hotel was and our tour guide told us they would know, they didn't. But they manged to ask another driver who did so we made it back. As we got back though we decided to walk to the BK that was close by for some ice cream. We manged to sit and talk til they closed around 10 because we didn't realize it was 10pm already. The sun was just beginning to set so it completely threw us off. In Wales they have about 19 hours of sunlight roughly, it would be interesting to live there. After getting back to my room I took a shower and crashed from the long day because we had another long day ahead of us again.
Bumble Bee outfit
Hotel Room
DAY 2
We got up around 6:30 and ate breakfast around 7:30 because then at 8:30 we left for another day of adventure. We first started by visiting an old monastery where monks used to live. It was a secluded place with the Y river running by it. The place seemed so peaceful. It was Tintin Abby. It would definitely be a place I would like to go back and visit one day. A large part of it still remains intact but some of it has disappeared. This monastery lived by strict monk rules so it is really interesting to hear the history of it and how they lived.
Afterwards we went into town and had lunch. Like the day before we found a grocery store and were able to find things to make up a random meal. We were able to sit by the river and a 13th century bridge. The bridge is now just a pedestrian bridge and they had built a new bridge was it was a pretty cool to be able to eat lunch there.
Following lunch we made our way to The Big Pit, a coal mine where we got suited up with a hard hat and light and made our way down 300 ft below the surface to travel around the mines. Our guide was a lot of fun and made it interesting. He told us all about how it was to work in the mine during the 1940's before they had safety regulations. And how they used pit ponies to move the coal. Big Pit was the largest coal mine in Wales, for the fact that they could take up two drums of coal in the elevator unlike all the other ones who could only move one at a time. I really enjoyed this experience and I definitely learned a lot from it. Our tour guide actually worked in the mines for 14 years before leaving the industry, only to return one day to give tours. His father was also a coal miner and ended up dying at 51 because of working in the mines. When we went down we had to remove all electronics, even watches because anything with a battery could set off an explosion. It was really damp and there were some tunnels that we had to duck down in order to not hit our heads. Then when we got to one point we all switched off our lights to see what it was like down there because they didn't always have safe lights they could use. Along the way he also was telling us about how the coal from the Big Pit was used in the Titanic, and he actually gave me and two others a piece. I was pretty excited because I can now say that I have coal that came from the same mine as the Titanic's coal. Who would have known.
Big Pit
Geared up
Once coming back up to the surface it was back on the bus. I was able to actually get some sleep on the bus so it wasn't too bad. About an hour and a half into it we made a 15 minute pit stop to stretch, once again at an even bigger truck stop. It was actually two levels and had a KFC and BK in it. Then it was back on the bus and overall the drive back ended up taking about 4 hours because outside of London we ran into traffic and getting from the outside to central London takes awhile anyway. I was pretty happy to head back and not have to be on a bus again. We ended up getting back around 7:30pm. We manged to get on the tube, but the fun wasn't over. The stop before ours there was a bag that was unattended and no one knew who it belonged to so a guy went and told the conductor and she came back to check it out. Turns out when they guy was asking around the person wasn't paying attention. So when she came onto the bus and asked he finally realized what was happening and said it was his bag. This proved that they really do take unattended bags seriously. After that incident it was smoothing sailing back to our dorm and once I got back I unpacked and went to bed early because of having class the next day.
I will actually be doing today's blog tomorrow along with tomorrows because its about 1am here and I'm wanting to get some sleep. But I wanted to catch everyone up on the exciting weekend. I hope everyone enjoys it.
This weekend, day trip to Stonehenge and Bath.
And I am working on trying to get pictures uploaded, so hopefully I will have time one of these days.
And Happy 4th of July!!! Cheers!
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