Last night in the apartment was not the best.  The party did seem to end at midnight and I was able to fall asleep, but according to Tim, the music started back up at 12:30 AM.  Although I didn't hear that music, I did hear someone banging on the apartment building's outside door at 4:30 AM.  Since no one answered their banging, they decided to call each of the apartments asking people to open the door.  OY! 

Luckily we left this place this morning and going to Cardiff, the capital of Wales.  On the way, we stopped at Caerphilly Castle, built between 1268-1290.

Rick Steves said to skip this castle if we had visited other Welsh castles in the north, but since we bought an annual membership, we decided to check it out.  We are glad we did.  Here are some cool shots Tim took walking around the castle.

One of the towers of the castle is leaning at a 10 degree angle.  They have a cool wooden sculpture of a man holding it up (bottom left of photo).  To put this in perspective, the Leaning Tower of Pisa leans about 4 degrees.

One of the cool parts of Caerphilly Castle is the extensive renovation that was done from 1928 though the 1960s.  So, instead of looking up towers that have windows and fireplaces and no floors, this castle has floors installed, so you can really see what it was like.

Here is a reconstruction of a bedroom:

And the Great Hall:

During the reconstruction they installed this wooden terrace on the top of the wall called a hoarding.  They even have mannequins inside the hoarding:

We spent about 2 hours at Caerphilly Castle.  We can't check into our AirBnB until 3 PM, so we decided to check out a brewery nearby for lunch...oh, and a flight:

I really like the graphics for this brewery...between their logo, the painted storage vats outside, and their cans.  They seem to have a great artist on staff.

This isn't the best AirBnB we have rented, but somehow we were able to sleep OK in a bed with springs popping out of the mattress.  This is the first morning in a while, so it seems, that we don't have breakfast cooked for us.  This is probably a good thing since we ate a full breakfast consisting of eggs, hash browns, sausage (veggie for me), tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, fruit, and tea; AKA...a lot of food.  It was somewhat refreshing having just a bowl of cereal for a change.

After breakfast we headed out for a 40 mile road trip around the Gower Peninsula.  The Gower Peninsula is on the south-central coast of Wales with much of it owned by the National Trust which protects and keeps nature...well, natural.

First stop on our tour is a neolithic site called Arthur's Stone, and here it is:

The setting is really cool with a great view of the sea down below.

Next stop is Rhossili Beach and Worms Head.  Check out this scenery:

 We parked the car and made our way towards the "Worms head" which got it names from the Old English word "wurm" meaning dragon.  The cool thing about the Worms Head is that you can walk to it during low tide, but during high tide it is an island.  As we made our way there, we passed horses on sheep...kind of crazy.  I don't know if the horses are wild or owned by a local farmer.  As for the sheep...why the heck do they hang out on the side of the cliff like that?!?

When we were approaching the Worms Head there was a sign telling you when you can hike out to the end based on the tide:

We happened to be here during those hours, but we didn't have the proper footwear to hike out there.  Everyone heading there had boots to walk through the puddles left behind when the tide receded.  I did walk out a little bit and collect some cool shells and rocks.

On the walk back, we noticed this sunken ship that shows through the sand during low tide.  The Helvetia sunk on 31 October 1887...wow, it will be its 132nd anniversary tomorrow.

It was a bit windy up there on the cliff above the beach:

Next stop, Oxwich Castle.  When we got there we found out that it wasn't an actually castle built for fortification, but was built by a rich family, as a 16th century Tudor mansion to resemble a castle.  Oh well...it was pretty neat.

We were now getting pretty hungry, but first another neolithic site.  The Long Cairn, a 5,500-year-old burial chamber.  40 skeletons were found here in 1869.

Just past the cairn was the Cathole Rock Cave where we found a Geocache.

It was finally time for lunch, so we stopped at a pub and enjoyed some chicken dish (Tim) and pesto pasta (me).  We then had one more place to check out, the town of Mumbles, on the southeast corner of the Gower Peninsula.  It was raining, so we just drove through without walking around, but then Tim noticed pub that said "microbrewery" on the sign, and there just happened to be a parking spot right our front, so we went on it.

We then drove back to our apartment and walked to another brewery 8 minutes away.

Oh, there is a castle here in town just outside the brewery:

We then returned to the apartment and watched some Netflix.  It is now 11:40 PM and there seems to be a party going on in the upstairs apartment.  Not cool.  We won't be sad tomorrow to be leaving this AirBnB.  Let's just hope tomorrow nights AirBnB is better.

We woke up, got ready, and went downstairs for breakfast.  Yet another morning of a full English breakfast.  This will be our last big breakfast for a while since we are staying at AirBnB's for the next week or so.  It will be nice to get back to a bowl or cereal and fruit instead of a big, unhealthy meal.

After breakfast we packed up an headed out.  Today we are headed to Swansea with a stop at a castle on the way.  It took us about 1.5 hours to get to Carreg Cennen Castle.  We parked in the parking lot down below and had to walk up the hill to the castle.

Almost there...

Carreg Cennan Castle was originally built in the 1100's and then remodeled in the last 1200's.  The castle now stands in ruin.

Check out this slit in the wall of the castle to ll for an archer to aim a long bow in multiple directions.

The castle sits atop limestone cliffs allowing for awesome views.

One of the cool features of Carreg Cennen Castle is the natural cave that it is built on top of.  Here is Tim ready to go exploring into the cave.

Here are some more of the entryways into the cave:

The only light we had was the flash on my iPhone, so I would go a few steps and then light the way for Tim to catch up.  The cave went 55 yards in...further than we expected.  There wasn't much to see, but there were some cool formations on the walls.

We reached the end and turned back.  This is the steep climb back up to ground level:

We finished at the castle and walked down the hill to the car.  In 1 hour we arrived in Swansea and checked into our AirBnB just after 3 PM.  We unpacked and headed out to find dinner.  On the way we passed a statue of the poet Dylan Thomas who was born in Swansea.

Oh look...we found a brewery, so had a flight and shared a pizza.

We woke up with the sound of the tide outside the window...pretty nice.  We got ready and went down for breakfast.  Another full Welsh breakfast of eggs, toast, mushrooms, tomato, sausage, and beans.  After breakfast we packed up the room and were ready to go by 9:30 AM.  We have a lot to see today, so we needed to get an early start.

First stop is Cilgerran Castle, about 1 hour drive away.  Cilgerran Castle, built around 1223, and was left to ruin and eventually abandoned in 1400.

Next stop is Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber, less than 30 minutes drive away.  Pentre Ifan is a neolithic site over 5,500 years old.  The capstone rests on the tips of three other stones.  It is so cool.

One theory is that it was totally covered up as a burial chamber as seen in this picture below:

However, a new theory is that it is what it is.  It is just a more elaborate version of a standing stone.  Tim and I, with our new neolithic structure knowledge, believe this is the case.

It is now after 12:30 PM.  We have to get to St Davids since there are two sites to see there that close at 5:30 PM.  45 minutes later we were checking into our hotel room and walking to St Davids Bishop's Palace, dating back to the 13th and 14th century.

This is what this palace looked like back in the day:

Once we saw this drawing, we noticed signs of the checkerboard pattern.

Down in the underbelly of the palace where the kitchens were located:

Tall people like Tim have to head the warning of the first two placards while walking around these Medieval buildings...I really can't relate.

The view of St Davids Cathedral from this palace is really nice:

Speaking of the cathedral...time to visit it. St Davids Cathedral is built on the grounds of a monastic community founded by Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, in the 500's.  This cathedral started being built in 1180.

The nave.  I love the wooden ceiling.

The cathedral had an app I downloaded that gave us a tour of the place.  Here we are learning about Saint David (the center panel).  Below him is supposedly a container that holds some of his remains. Because Saint David is the patron saint of Wales, many people came and still come here on pilgrimages.

Here is a view of the cathedral from the cloister:

One last view of this amazing building as we climb the hill back into town:

When we got back to town we decided to stop at a pub for a pint.  There was a fire going by one of tables, but there was a couple already sitting there.  We asked if they minded if we sat there as well since the fire was inviting.  We joined them and stayed for the next 3 hours enjoying each others company.  This is what traveling the world is all about...meeting new people and learning about life in other countries.

Around 8:30 PM we arrived back to our hotel and had a late dinner (Tim: chicken dish; Me: Beetroot and spinach tortellini).  We then went upstairs to our room, watched a bit of TV, and fell asleep.  I am actually writing the blog a few days later as the many pints at the first pub followed by a late dinner really made we sleepy.

We woke up to blue skies.  Today should be a nice day.  We went down for breakfast and returned to the room and watched a bit of the World Cup Rugby match of Wales versus South Africa.  England won yesterday, and if Wales wins today then there will be England versus Wales in the finals.  Today's match is the talk of the town. 

By halftime we had to checkout of the hotel, but we were able to listen to the rest of the match on the radio.  Unfortunately, Wales lost, but it was a close match.  In about 50 minutes we arrived at Harlech Castle.

Harlech Castle is another Edwardian castle completed in 1289.  It wasn't as impressive as the other 2 castles we saw recently, but the setting was incredible.  Here are some of the better photos that Tim took:

After about 1 hour of exploring the castle, we continued our way to Aberystwyth.  As we were driving I noticed a sign for Cymer Abbey, so we made a u-turn and went.  Cymer Abbey was opened in 1198 and belonged to monks of the Cistercian Order.  By 1388 there were only 5 monks left, and in 1536, the abbey closed when Hentry VIII abolished all small abbeys.

Well, that was pretty cool and definitely worth the u-turn.  We returned to the car, and 1 hour later we arrived to Aberystwyth, our stop for the night.  We checked into our B&B and were happy with this view out our window:

It was now 3 PM and we haven't eaten since breakfast, so we headed out and went to Ultracomida, a tapas restaurant that was highly recommend in our travel guide.  The food was really good.

After eating we went for a walk and found the remnants of Aberystwyth Castle:

This town of Aberystwyth is really pretty with a nice waterfront area.

Aberystwyth is home to Aberystwyth University founded in 1872.  There s a new, modern campus up the hill from town, but the old, original buildings are still standing:

We returned to our room to enjoy watching the sunset out the window.  We had some bread and cheese and Tim a a couple of whisky and cokes.  We spent the rest of the night watching TV and I planned out the next week or so of our trip.

We are only here for 1 night.  Tomorrow we drive to St. Davids.  It is only a 2 hour drive...not too bad.  Hopefully we will find a couple of things to stop and see along the way.

We booked tickets to ride a train up Mount Snowdon a few days ago.  Mount Snowdon is the tallest peak in Wales and England topping out at 3,560 feet.  Not too high in our standards, but worth going up.  I wanted to hike up it which would have taken 6-8 hours round-trip, but Tim hasn't been feeling well, so I book train tickets.  Here is the train:

Notice the wonderful blue skies and the view?  Well...we didn't have any of that.  When we woke up it was pouring.  When we arrived at the train station at 9:30 AM, it was raining.  When we headed up the mountain at 5 mph for 1 hour, it was raining with low visibility.  Here we are standing on the peak with a 360 degree view of nothing.  It was pouring and pretty cold at the top.

We spent 30 minutes on the summit and then go back on the train for the 1 hour trip back down. Here is a photo of our typical view out the train window:

The plan was to do a hike after the train ride, but the rain continued, so we went to the National Slate Museum instead.  This was the museum we were supposed to go to a couple of days ago but wound up at Llechwedd Slate Caverns where we toured the mine.  It winds up that taking that tour made us better appreciate the Slate Museum.  By the way, the Slate Museum was an actual slate quarry mine called Dinorwig Quarry until 1969.

One of the museum highlights was a demonstration of slate splitting.  This gentleman worked at this slate mine for most of his life.  He demonstrated splitting a larger piece of slate into individual roofing slates.  It is pretty cool that he still gets to show off his craft and make others better appreciate what these individuals did for a living.

Another really cool part of the museum was a working water wheel.  Inside some of the facilities, the gears were turning on the ceiling that used to run the equipment on the floor.  Wow.

This quarry even had its own foundry where they made all the metal gears and equipment they needed.

Here is a great view of the museum and part of the quarry they used to mine slate from.

We then returned to Caernarfon.  Tim was hungry, but most restaurants were closed until 5 PM, so he settled on KFC.  After watching him eat, we went for a pint while waiting for the Indian restaurant to open.  After the pint, I got some take-away Indian food and we returned to the hotel.  Oh...I had to take another photo of the cool Caernarfon Castle.

The plan for tomorrow is to do a hike or two, but the weather isn't supposed to improve, so we will see how it goes.

We woke up and it was still raining.  The weather report said that it should clear up in the afternoon, so we decided to take it easy until then.  We went down to breakfast and returned to the room.  It is actually good to have this down time since I need to work on the rest of our Wales itinerary.  As of now, I don't have any housing booked past tomorrow night, our last night in this hotel.

After a couple of hours I had a rough plan and 2 more places booked to get us through Tuesday morning.  The rain has finally stopped, but I can't convince Tim that we should go on a hike.  He is still not 100% and he fears that the trails will be wet and muddy from the 2 days of rain.  I do agree with him about the muddy trails, but we had to get out of the hotel room, so I search for something to do, and a brewery popped up that was a 15 minute drive away.

So, off we went to Snowdonia Brewery. They only had 3 beers on tap, so I ordered a pint of each instead of the smaller sampler size.

After the brewery we headed back to the hotel, parked the car, and walked to a local pub for a pint.  The pub was filled with screaming children, so we finished the pint and went to the local Weatherspoon.  We went to one of these a week ago and the food was OK, but the drink prices are amazing.  It was a Saturday night, so it was pretty busy.  We found a table for 2 and hung out there for a couple of hours eating a bit and drinking a bit.  It was a fun night talking to others at the table next to ours.

On the drink menu they offered pitchers of mixed drinks for £6 each, so we thought we would try it.  Tim had The Godfather (Jack Daniels, Amaretto, and Coke) and I had the Ginberry Fizz (Gin, Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur,  and Lemonade).  YUM!

We returned to the hotel around 8:30 PM, watched some TV and went to bed.  Tomorrow we drive to Aberystwyth.  It is only 2.5 hours away, so it shouldn't be too bad.

We woke up and got ready for breakfast.  The room at this B&B is pretty small, but the breakfast is really good, and check out the breakfast room.  It is an old church.

The plan is to do a 2 hour hike this morning, but Tim was still not feeling well, so I guess the hike is off.  That is OK.  I have 2 more hikes planned in the next 2 days.  So, we headed to Caernarfon where we are going to spend the next 3 nights.  On the way, we drove over the Menai Suspension Bridge, opened in 1826.  The designer is the same one as the suspension bridge in Conwy that was in yesterday's blog.

About 10 minutes over the bridge is the town of Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch.  Click on the name to here how to pronounce it.

After taking a few photos at the train station, we drove 15 more minutes to Caernarfon.  We are here for 3 nights, but the only tourist thing to do in this town is to tour the Caernarfon Castle.  It was too early to check into our hotel, so we parked the car and headed straight to the castle.

This is another Edwardian castle, like the one in Cowy, built by Edward I around 1330.  Even though the castle was never completed, it is pretty cool.

The castle was used for the investiture of the the Prince of Wales (George V, Queen Elizibeth II's grandfather) in 1911 and again in 1969 (Prince Charles).  In one of the towers they had a TV playing the Investiture of Prince Charles.  Tim took a photo of the TV.

Here are more photos of the castle:

After spending a few hours walking around the castle, we left and Tim took a few good photos from outside the castle walls.

After a pretty good night's sleep, I'm still dreaming that I am on a boat, we woke up, got ready, and headed to breakfast at 9:15 AM.  Conwy is a pretty small town, but there is a lot to see, so I wanted to get an early start.  First stop is Conwy Castle.  On the way, we found the Conwy Suspension Bridge.  It opened in 1826 and was designed to match the castle it is attached to.  Tim's back is to the castle, so you can't see the connection between the castle and the bridge, but believe me, it is.

We finally made it to Conwy Castle (completed in 1289) where we decided to purchase a pass that will get us in most of the historic sites in Wales for free.  The nice thing about buying the pass is that we will visit places that we wouldn't have visited if we had to pay admissions for them.  Anyway, Conwy Castle doesn't have any furniture or art or armor.  It is just the shell of the castle with 4 towers that are climbable with some amazing views.

We both really enjoyed this castle.  Here are some of the better photos taken:

Wow...what a cool castle.  After walking up and around all parts of Conwy Castle, we exited the castle grounds and did Rick Steves' walking tour of Conwy.  When we climbed up onto the city walls, we had some awesome views of Conwy Castle.

Here Tim is pointing out the castle:

This is kind of funny...in the Rick Steves' walking tour, it said to walk down the road till you see and "elderly people" crossing sign.  He then commented that the sign also reminds you to stand up straight...ha.

The tour continued, and we arrived at Plas Mawr, an Elizabethan townhouse dating from the 16th century making it one of the oldest residences in Wales.  We normally wouldn't pay to go into a place like this, but because we bought the historical pass, we went in for free.  There was a really fun audio guide that was provided, making the tour of Plas Mawr pretty good.

There was some pretty fun plaster-work on the ceilings and around fireplaces throughout the home.  The wall covering is also pretty cool.

I like these cherry trees that were trained to grow against the wall.

It was interesting to how the walls were constructed.

Photo taken from the courtyard:

Another great shot of Conwy Castle out the window of the tower of Plas Mawr.

Well...that tour turned out better than expected.

Continuing on the walking tour, we went down to the harbor area.

Ok..one last photo of Conwy Castle, our new favorite castle.

We competed the walking tour around 3PM and was ready for something to eat.  We passed a pub earlier that looked like it had a good mico-brewery selection of beer, so we went there and was lucky that they had food.  So, we ordered a couple of pints and some food (Tim: hot dog and chips; me: roasted red pepper soup and a cheese & tomato toasted sandwich).  After one more pint we headed to the other beer pub in town and had a pint.  Tim isn't feeling well, so we then headed back to the room.  We watched "Outlaw King" on Netflix about Robert the Bruce, the 14th-century Scottish King tried to get the crown back from England.  It was interesting since we learned about this story while traveling around Scotland.

Tomorrow we have a short drive to Caernarfon with a couple of stops along the way.  We are supposed to do a 2 hour hike in the morning, but I guess we will see how Tim is feeling.  So, until then...

After a great sleep in a nice large bed I thoroughly enjoyed the nice big shower that followed.  I really did like being on the narrowboat, but after 2 weeks, bigger seems better.  The hotel we stayed in included breakfast, so we went down around 9:15 AM and had a proper Welsh breakfast that resembled a proper Irish, Scottish, and English breakfast...eggs, meats, tomato, potato, mushrooms, and beans.  We really like having a large breakfast, that way we can continue our sightseeing and skip lunch.

After breakfast we checked out of the hotel room.  Tim spotted this cat in the parking lot and liked the fact that it was walking past the large cat statue.

The first stop today is the National Slate Museum, so I put that into Google maps and we were off.  About 1 hour later we arrived at a place that didn't seem like a museum, but there was mountains covered in slate, so maybe it is?  This place is called "Llechwedd Slate Caverns."  it wasn't a museum, but a slate mine experience.  Since we were here, we figured we should do it, so we bought the package tour that included a tour down in the mine and a tour that took you on top of the quarry.

First was the underground tour where we donned helmets and descended for about 90 minutes on a rail car of a sort that took up down the main shaft of the mine.

Once down there, we then got out and walked into various caverns carved out by the slate miners starting in 1846 and ending in the 1960's, although, some mining continue there to this day.  It was obviously difficult to get photos in the low light, but Tim managed to get a few.

Here I am learning how to use the tools the miners used to drill into the slate.

Here are a couple more photos inside the mine:

At the end of the tour we were told that the rail car that is supposed to take us back up to the surface broke, so we have to walk out.  It was kind of cool, since we got to go into some tunnels and caverns that the public doesn't normally see, but it was a pretty long walk up.

When we finally emerged, we got a nice view of some ziplinners doing their thing right above us:

After the underground experience, we were ready for the quarry explorer tour.  They loaded us up into a 4x4 military truck and up the steep quarry roads we went.  We stopped an looked at the old buildings were the slate was processed into roof tiles and had some great views.

When we got back to the car it was already 3 PM not leaving us enough time to go the slate museum we intended to go to.  We will save that for another day.   Instead, we stopped in the town of Betws-y-Coed on the way to our overnight location of Conwy.  We decided to have an early dinner, so stopped into a pizza place (Tim: Pizza; me: large Mediterranean salad) and then walked around town a bit.  There wasn't really much since this town is really used as a jumping off point for hiking around the Snowdon National Park, but they did of course have a church.

Here is the Church of Saint Mary built in 1873.

We then drove the 30 minutes to our B&B for the next 2 nights in Conwy.  We arrived around 6 PM and decided to stay in the room the rest of the night since I really have to come up with a Wales plan.  After today's "wrong destination" experience, I figured I better spend some time figuring out where we want to go and what we want to see in Wales.  So, for the past 3 hours that is what I was working on.  It is now almost midnight, so I better finish up on this blog entry.  Tomorrow we tour the city of Conwy which includes a castle and a city wall.  It should be a nice day.

After 2 weeks powering down the canals of northeastern England, we are back on land again. We turned in our narrowboat, took a bus to the train station, took a train to Liverpool, walked 20 minutes to Hertz, and drove 1.5 hours to Ruthin, Wales.

We arrived at the Ruthin Castle Hotel and Spa, our hotel for the night, at 2 PM.  Check-in wasn't until 3 PM and the room wasn't ready yet, so we decided to walk into town.  By the way...here is our hotel for the night:

There are even peacocks roaming the grounds.

Rick Steves suggests visiting an old jail (Ruthin Gaol) and Nantclwyd y Dre, an Elizabethan-era, oldest timbered townhouse in Wales.  As it turns out, both of these places are closed from October through March.  I guess we really are traveling during the off-season now. 

Even though Nantclwyd y Dre, built in 1435, we checked it out from the outside.  I guess we got to save £7 since it was closed.

We continued our walk into town and came across this rock:

Would you believe that "On this stone the legendary King Arthur is said to have beheaded Huail, brother of Gildas the historian, his rival in love and war."  Well...it must be true since there was an historical marker there:

This old building called Myddleton Arms AKA Seven Eyes and dates back to the 16th century.  Called Seven Eyes due to the 7 dormer windows.

I have no idea what this building is, but it is really cool looking.

Nice views from the town:

In town there was a memorial to Grand Prix driver Thomas Maldwyn.  Born in Ruthin, he was killed in a freak accident when he collided with a safety marshal in a race in 1977.

This mosaic was on the walls of Ruthin Gaol, the old jail.  It is of Grace Hones who was put on trail in 1786 for stealing cloth.  She was sentenced to Australia after spending time in Ruthin Gaol.

We stopped in a local pub for a pint, then went to Weatherspoons for dinner.  As we have traveled the UK, we have seen Weatherspoons all over.  We have avoided it since I try to avoid chains when we travel.  However, they have these signs on their window advertising the low cost of beers and cocktails, so we thought we would give it a try.  Well, for £22 ($28.50) we had a 11 inch pizza, grilled chicken & bacon sandwich with fries, 2 draft beers, 1 can of beer, and a double gin and tonic.  Now I know why people frequent this business.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and checked in.  It is pretty nice to be in a room that has room after spending the last 2 weeks in a narrowboat.  The bed is huge and the shower looks as though I can turn around in it without hitting my arms on the walls.  We really did enjoy the narrowboat holiday, but it is nice to have room to move around again.