I love Wales!

I went to Wales last weekend...left early Friday morning and returned to London Sunday evening. It was absolutely wonderful in every way! The weather all weekend was pretty much perfect, sunny and low to mid 70's. We were exceedingly lucky because it rains so much there. I made a new friend, Rosie, who is from Delaware, but is currently living in Germany and teaching English. She is 22 and she's super fun! So we hung out all weekend and funnily enough she came down to my house in Surrey on Sunday after the trip and stayed over night, because the next morning she was meeting her parents at the airport before they headed off to travel around England and Poland for a few days. Anyway, the tour went all over Wales-southern, central, and northern. We started off on the first day and went to Tintern Abbey, which is a massive abbey that was built in 1131 and dissolved in 1536 during the dissolution of the church under King Henry's reign in the 16th century. We spent the day covering different places in the Wye valley as well as Brecon Beacon National Park. We travelled to a town called Caerphilly, which boasts the second largest castle in Britain. Nice little town...had lunch on the grass in the bright sunshine! Then we drove a bit more and stopped for a great walk up a massive hill in Brecon Beacon, which enabled us to have some amazing views of the area. Then we went on to Abergavenny where we had dinner and stayed overnight at a hostel. Saturday morning we headed out toward Snowdonia National Park (north Wales). The drive through the country was just fantastic. So incredibly beautiful with the massive hills, baby lambs, and some small lakes and rivers. We stopped at the ruins of Castell-y-Bere, where we had a nice picnic lunch in the ruins (not much remains). Once again, amazing views. Sometime after that we made a stop in a town called Beddgelert (Bedd means grave of-and Gelert was Prince Llywelyn's dog). There's a really cool story behind the name of the town, and Gelert's grave is actually there for anyone to go and visit. The story is on the town's website. It's a precious little town with a gorgeous river running right through it. Then on to a very interesting village called Portmeiron, which is very colorful and actually reminded me a bit of Spanish architecture, in some ways. My new friend Rosie and I took a great walk along the coast. We travelled up through Snowdonia park, which is more rugged and mountainous than south Wales. Then we ended up in Caernarfon, where there is another fantastic castle! This was a really neat town and the hostel we stayed at was awesome. Four of us girls went to the grocery store and got some food for dinner and then went back and made dinner at the hostel. Then Rosie and I played a mean game of Scrabble-which I believe was my first time to ever play! I don't remember every playing before, but that is such a fun game! Sunday we got an early start and made the drive to the Isle of Angelsey, which is home of the longest name place in Britain, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which translates into "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave." There are actually 2 places with longer names, one in New Zealand (92 letters) and one in Thailand (163 letters!!). After crossing over into England we made our final stop at Stratford-Upon-Avon, which is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Stratford is a beautiful little town and I would like to go back there when I have more time! That pretty much covers my Wales weekend tour. I sooooooo love Wales and hope to return again in the future!