Day One

Today actually began yesterday morning when I woke up at 6:30am. Reason is, I never actually “slept” last night. I dozed off and on through the night, but there was never a break from Friday to Saturday. We had almost an hour delay in Philly last night because of a broken arm on one of the seats on the plane. This was literally 10 minutes after David had talked about a prior flight almost being cancelled because of this same issue. Because of that, we didn’t get in to Manchester until almost 9am (6am EST). We had to hang around and wait on some more arrivals so we sat in the terminal and tried not to fall asleep. Their plan for us today was to keep as busy as possible so that we wouldn’t have time to fall asleep. Our first stop was the most amazing mall!! It looked more like a palace or Roman cathedral than a mall. Lots of live entertainment too which was very cool. I had to snap pictures of the British words they use for things; like “nappies” and “knickers”. We were there a couple of hours. I had to buy some shorts because the UK is experiencing unusually warm weather. This is a problem for me because I only brought jeans and pants. (actually as I am typing this I am sitting on my bed in my room looking out over some strait (can’t remember the name of it) and the Island of Anglesy. The only problem with this picture is that there is no A/C because they generally don’t need it and I don’t have any shorts and tank tops. We are all praying that since we are so unbelievably tired we will fall asleep no problem, even with the heat.

So anyway, back to the day…

The CeLT guys who were our “guides” were named William and Wallace so we dubbed ourselves the Braveheart bus J They were great guys that gave us lots of good information. Wallace has been in Ireland for about 10 years and it’s the 3^rd summer in Wales for the William.

After the well we went to the Conwy Castle in Wales. Edward I built this castle between 1283-1292. This wasn’t built to be a showy castle like the one in Caenarfon where we are staying. This was more of a fortress of sorts. We walked all up and through it. Some of the steps up to the highest tower were so small I could barely fit my feet on them. It was freaking me out a bit actually! The original medieval walls are still intact. I’ve dreamed of getting the chance to see and touch something so old and it was just as cool as I expected it to be. In some of the areas of the castle you could really imagine what life was like way back then. We then walked the Conwy Town Walls, although not very much of it. There was a lot of climbing and we were pretty exhausted. The views were stunning though. I am so glad to be somewhere that looks NOTHING like home. J

Then we drove to Caenarfon. They don’t allow busses into the actual city so they had to drop us at the city gate. Thankfully it was a short walk to our house. ..our house ::sigh::  It’s the most adorable house ever!!! The name of our house is “Isfryn”. It’s black and white with a red door. It’s absolutely perfect! We got our room assignments and then dinner was waiting on us…chicken and dumplings. It was so yummy, I had 2 bowls of it. After dinner we went up to our little rooftop terrace. David joked with me when I said how European everything is. But it is and I have always dreamed of seeing it so I have been in heaven all day. You can see the castle not far away and the wall of our terrace is the wall of the city, that is part of the castle. It’s very hard to describe, but it’s just the coolest thing ever J

David, Ashley, Nik and I then took a walk around the city. Pretty much everything was already closed, but I sat in the square and sketched part of the castle for a while. We just walked and looked at places we want to go back to. It started to get chilly outside, although it’s still not feeling the least bit cool inside!!

It’s 9:30pm our time right now. Lights are out at 10pm!! I am ready for sleep!!!

 Having issues connecting to the wifi so this may not get to be a live update.