On the way that morning, I sat near Bernard and Maureen and (Dr. Ed) Packard and we talked about rivers and how Americans say things wrong and evil cows that go into town at night and take three children and roll on them until they're flat. We stopped in Chester for lunch and a few hours, where Bernard, Maureen, and I sat in a little French cafe called Brasserie Gerard, which played "Eet" by Regina Spektor and served jam in individual tiny glass jars. I kept mine.
When we got to Llandudno, the town on the beach of North Wales where our hotel was, everything was so picturesque. It was cold and grey but the ocean was beautiful, and Jessica's and my room looked directly out over it. After a little exploring and fish and chips for dinner, it rained so we kept a low profile and stayed in, invited some people to our room and watched the X-Factor before going to bed early.
Saturday morning I wore my orange scarf from Kelly in the Halloween spirit, and after a legitimately tasty breakfast walked outside to 10 of the roughly 30 minutes of sunshine we got all weekend. But the ocean in those ten minutes was breathtaking.
Wales is so beautiful I could cry. Let's all go there together.
Who'd have thought I'd wake up on Halloween morning to tea, toast, and eggs, walk outside onto the rocky beach of Northern Wales and skip rocks into the ocean? Getting out of the disease-filled Manor and into the cold clean air, I saw the water that's been on both sides and bridged the gap. Four thousand miles between, but the cotton in my socks was touching shoes that touched the rocks that have been smoothed by centuries of rolling under and around water that's spent millennia rolling and smoothing rocks on the western shore.
Caernarfon Castle was first on the agenda for the day, and it wins the Best Castle Award with no contest. It's huge and all open, no roped-off rooms or carpets you can't step on—just big and old and full of passages and towers to explore. I played Marco Polo with Jessica and her friends (my friends?) Samantha, Ryan, and Danielle. I ran along a wall that was probably too close to imminent death, but it was so fun.
The grass is so green because you're not supposed to walk on it.
After Caernarfon, where I bought my grandmother a postcard because if I were a grandmother I'd want to see that my granddaughter went to a castle, was Portmerion village, a very strange place where everything is in bright colours. There is also a beach there but almost no water... but there is quicksand, which you have to cross to get onto the beach. I made it over safely, but the return journey was less successful and now my Chucks have even more character! I didn't drop my ice cream though, which is good because it was delicious.
Danielle, Halloween, and Sam, with ice cream
Soon we left the strange, strange world of Portmerion and passed fields upon fields of spray-painted sheep to visit the slate caverns, sometimes known as the least fun and least useful two hours of the trip. It was cool and really intriguing to actually see what a mine was like, but it was not worth the 400-something foot descent, and the thought of being surrounded by thousands of tons of rock on all sides just made me want to get above ground immediately. I took pride in being the only one on the trip who didn't have to duck until the very end of the journey... and I would have made that too if it weren't for those pesky safety helmets. I made a point to get a blue one just like spring 08.
That night, after returning to the Ambassador Hotel, we (the general we you'll see named in the picture below) decided to go "out" to celebrate Danielle's birthday, even though it was a week or two previous. It took a while for us all to get organized and ready, which preparation was hindered further by the very confusing design of the hotel. I still don't understand how the room numbers worked or why you had to walk through the restaurant on the first floor to get between two rooms on the second. But eventually we made it down to the lobby to take a group picture and set out. Please note the Christmas decorations and the fact that this was Halloween night.
Kyle, me, Sam, Ryan, Jessica, and Danielle, with some holiday cheer
Since eating at the fish and chips place from the night before seemed too janky for how classy we looked, we decided to eat at Romeo's, an Italian restaurant on the second floor of an unidentified building. There was a big group there celebrating Halloween and a birthday, but in more of the typical Halloween sense (an excuse for women to dress like prostitutes). They were pretty loud but we still had a very good dinner. I mean, quality (if literally boiling) gnocchi after several weeks of nasty Refectory food was certainly worth the slightly more than I wanted to pay.
The plan was to go out dancing at one of the whopping two dance clubs in Llandudno, but we took a detour into a pub at the bottom of a hotel to chill out for a while. There were people singing karaoke, including a girl in a Smurf costume, and once we were all settled and seated, what should come on over the speakers but "Walkin' in Memphis"! It was so weird to be sitting in a pub, in Wales, listening to a song about home that just happened to come on.
As it turns out, "fancy" dress in the UK does not mean the same as fancy in the states, and so as we were not in costume, we didn't get in to the Boulevard for free. But we did get in, even I, who somehow forgot to bring any form of identification (because come on, I didn't have pockets). We were basically the first people at the club, but before long it was bumpin' if a little smelly. Who puts carpet in a club, I mean really. Jess, Danielle, and Kyle were having a really great time and were very into dancing, but Ryan and Sam and I headed out pretty early to make the longish cold walk back to our hotel, a journey made much more pleasant by the ebbing ocean on our right. I watched some TV in my pajamas and went to sleep.
Sunday morning we got to sleep in a little (till 0830), and after another splendid breakfast (which included, to everyone's delight, cocoa crispies), I walked outside to await the coach and was met with cold, drizzle, and the biggest rainbow I've ever seen in my life. It spread from the Great Orm all the way out over the pier, and I could hardly believe it. Such a something at least after some stress the night before.
You walk in a room, you look out a window, and something's there—something's there.
What a way to send us off from Llandudno and on to Swallow Falls. This was a weird detour on the return journey that turned out to be maybe the best part of the whole trip. Since it rained all weekend, the waterfall was raging like mad and swarming over the lower platforms. I took off my shoes and just stood in the overflow, it was so gorgeous. Definitely worth the surprise £1 it cost to get to it, and at least I had dry shoes at the end. In retrospect, I didn't get pneumonia either, so that was a win-win situation for sure.
A final stop in Betws y Coed (I think; Welsh doesn't have enough vowels) tempted me into buying a hat along with my customary Wales (Cymru) patch, but then, who can resist a purple hat? Before long we were back at the manor in time for dinner, by which time I already missed Wales. It was so beautiful and clean and full of spectacular nature, and so lovely to have a trip scheduled out for me so I didn't have to plan anything but still didn't feel busy, especially after three weekends at the Manor. One day, maybe, I'll go again. You should come too.
