Conwy, Wales

Wednesday, 23 October 2019

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.

Touring the kitchen

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...