Castles, castles everywhere...

Enjoy some pictures of everything we've done since Friday!
Attack of the ancient monuments!
The Conwy Castle chapel, with a view of King Edward I's window.
Learning Welsh from a wall in Conwy.
Living room/dining room/kitchen/bathroom of Britain's smallest house.
Smallest house - front yard.
View from the Conwy city wall - you can see the castle in the background.

View of Llandudno from the top of the Little Orme. The Great Orme is off in the distance.
Us on the Little Orme.
In the living room of the Llandudno flat with Andy and Sue Hutton
Fireplace, floorless Great Hall, Conwy Castle
The King's private loo in the castle - hence the grossed out look on my face.



Yesterday was a fun day. We woke up relatively early, went to the library to go online, and then drove to Conwy (pronounced Conway - I am struggling to ''get'' Welsh) to spend the day. Cary is doing very well driving on the other side of the road and mastering a traffic system that is pretty unfamiliar. I actually kind of like it better - about a mile before you get to a roundabout, there's a map of the roundabout that shows you what road goes where, and then you just follow the map! It seems simple enough, and traffic doesn't actually have to stop. Of course, it's easy for me to say that from the passenger's seat :) Cary is doing great and seems to be less stressed out every time we finish a driving trip, so we are looking forward to worry-free driving before the end of this vacation.
We enjoyed Conwy a lot. We spent all our time in the medieval part of town, inside the wall. It was very cute, much smaller than walled York is. We found parking without too much difficulty and went to the castle first. Wales is full of castles built by Edward I (the jerky king from Braveheart) to try to control the Welsh. One of our guides in Edinburgh explained him this way: ''Edward I! Great king for England! Not so good for Scotland and Wales.'' Obviously he was a busy guy, taking over neighboring countries left and right. Anyway, he had this castle built in Conwy in about four years, along with a city wall, plunked down some English settlers inside, and 700 years later we have an adorable town that you can see in less than a day. The castle was pretty impressive - certainly not as big as the one in Edinburgh, but cool. Edward I and his wife actually did stay there sometimes, so it was neat to imagine them in the Great Hall, chapel, etc. We visited one room that adjoined the chapel and had a tiny window overlooking it, so that the king and queen could attend chapel services but not actually sit in the chapel with other people. We also had some great views of Conwy and the surrounding countryside from the top of some of the turrets. Altogether enjoyable.

After the castle we did some souvenir shopping. I bought a teach yourself Welsh book, but I don't think it's going to be much help. The pronunciation is so hard to get without hearing it. There was an accompanying CD, but it cost £9 ($18), so I decided to skip it. What I need is a Welsh friend to practice with. Any takers? After shopping, we had some lunch at the Conwy Pantry - very good. Then we took Rick Steves' self-guided tour of the town, which took about 15 minutes. We saw the smallest house in Britain, which consisted of two Polly Pocket-sized rooms, one downstairs, and then a ladder leading upstairs. The house was condemned for human habitation around 1900. Then we walked around the city wall (pretty short, about 3/4 mile), shopped a little more, and drove back to Llandudno - got back around 4:00.

We napped a little bit in the afternoon and then had some dinner at an outstanding Italian restaurant in our neighborhood - Mama Rosa's. We didn't realize it was the kind of place you needed reservations for, so we had to sit upstairs by ourselves, but that was okay because it made for a very romantic meal - low lights, Andrea Boccelli, and really great food. Cary had pasta a la matriciana, and I had the best four-cheese pizza of my life. We also splurged on a glass of wine each and a tiramisu for dessert. Yummy yummy. After dinner we walked along the promenade for a while in an attempt to burn off all those calories, and then we went back to the flat for the night. All in all a great day.

Today we are going to Caernarfon (pronounced Cahnarvon - go figure) to see their castle and hopefully some other things as well. Rick Steves doesn't like Caernarfon as much, so his guide book is kind of skimpy on the town. We're hoping to find the TI and then go from there. We'll let you know tomorrow how it went!

-Emily

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