Catch up

Hello, friends,
Note: I don't have a working spell checker and I'm writing on a tempermental Bluetooth keyboard, so please be forviging of typos and spelling errors.
 
Wow, now I'm three days behind.  Vacation is so full and nighttime is for sleeping, not blogging.  But now we are on the narrow boat, and I'm done with my driving stint for now (mainly because I now have consistent Wi-Fi, which is spotty on the canal).

I think I left off after Friday. Saturday (still in Wales), we drove a few miles to a nearby town, Llandudno, which I had heard was a big tourist town.  Well, it's a bit town, anyway, seaside (right off a peninsula).  It is a big town, with a large grocery store, shopping centre, clothing stores, etc.  Obviously it's a place people live and shop, because the kitschy Welsh souvenir-type items were conspicuously absent.  There were many hotels and eating places, double-decker bus tours (enclosed and open), and a huge pier with carnival-type kiddie rides, food, arcades, cotton candy (candy floss), etc.  There was also an Alice in Wonderland-themed park, meaning grassy area with gazebo, etc, not a theme park.  There was a smallish stone circle in the middle (small compared to, say, Stonehenge).  I have no idea if it was real.  I mean, the stones were real, but I have no idea if the circle itself was ancient or not - there was not much of a marker.

We wandered and took photos - it was a beautiful day, sunny and probably 70 or 75 - and Giselle wanted ice cream and was getting a bit grumpy about it, so we had ice cream for lunch.  I had clotted cream and honey flavor with a piece of Cadbury Flake (yum).   We went back to the car (which was parked in a huge grocery store parking lot) and moved it, because it said there was a 3-hour time limit and I wasn't sure how strict they were about enforcing.  We went back into town and into a few shops and an interesting gallery, but then jet lag caught up with us and we decided to go home.  We did hit the grocery store for some dinner items - it was a lot like Meijer, or a Super Walmart, with clothing and tools and seasonal items in addition to a huge food selection.  Cadbury chocolate is ridiculously inexpensive, so of course we're making it a staple.  They have flavors here not available at home, so we're taking advantage and sampling several kinds. :)

In the afternoon, after driving home (egad, getting better but stil nerve-wracking), the family hung out at home and I went for a photo walk in town and on the old city walls (no charge to wander on the walls).  I found out the charge and hours for the castle itself, and took a lot of photos, and went home.  That night we cooked the mince we bought in the grocery store (that's ground beef, to you) and had that for dinner, then watched While You Were Sleeping.  Giselle and Thad were playing British Monopoly, and Genevieve kintted an infinity scarf for the AirBnB owner, which we left on a stuffed (plush) sheep that stands on the itty-bitty hearth.

End of Saturday.
Sunday - leisurely breakfast - scrambled eggs, cheese, pancakes, and what they call "back bacon" which is really more like ham.  The kind we had was realllllly salty.  I found out later that what we call "bacon" is called "rashers" here.  They put their butter in the fridge and leave the eggs on the counter, which I thought was interesting.  A lot of people bring their dogs into stores here as well.

After breakfast, we walked over to Conwy castle (about 1/2 mile) and paid the admission fees to visit the castle proper.  There was a demonstration called "Lord of the Wings" of prey birds, mostly owls but one falcon or hawk, never found out which.  The birds were all rescued and most of them were unable to be returned to the wild.  We got to pet them.  There were several kinds - a barn owl, a screech owl, an Indian Scops owl (so cute and little), and a 16-week-old tawny owl named Archimedes still with some pinfeathers.  So fluffy.....

There was also a weapons demonstration, mostly single- and two-handed broadswords. Genevieve did volunteer, with a 10-year-old lad, for "training," which involvd holding the weapon at arm's length infront of her while the man in charge counted to 5, then rotating it to horizontal (internal rotation at the shoulder, anatomically speaking) and counting, then back upright, then lateral rotation (palm up).  Genevieve was able to hold her weapon with her arm straight without faltering, and brought it down slowly when the man said they were done.  Then the lad and Genevieve were oufitted with padded bonnets, maille coifs, helmets, bucklers and swords.  Then the man running the demo said, "Which one is better?  Only one way to tell - ready, FIGHT!!!"  He immediately said, "No, no, I'm kidding!" But Genevieve is so used to getting ready to bout that she partially went into an en garde stance.  It was so cool.

Conwy Castle was also cool; it's just a shell (like Caernarfon), but had steps up the towers where you could see the city and the harbor.  I have a panoramic function on my camera and played with it a lot at the tops of the towers.  We'll see if the photos come out.

We walked into town and picked up some pastries (meat pies and such) from a bakery, and walked out to the harbor side to eat.  There we saw but did not go into the "Smallest House in Britain." We wandered around a few shops, one of which sold sword replicas and mead, and which had a lovely Northern Inuit dog visiting.  :)

After that we walked home, gathered a few things and then got in the car again (egad) and drove about 75 minutes to Chirk Castle, which is a livable castle, built by Thomas Myddleton in the 1600s.  It was very fancy inside whith lots of period furniture, cornices, carvings, etc.   I liked the stone shells of castles better, but it was worth seeing.   The driving was mostly on the highway, so I felt pretty confident.  It was Sunday evening and the traffic heading out of Conwy was pretty thick (plus there was a Bryan Adams concert in a nearby town - not sure if this was the cause of some of it) but we were going the other way, so that was nice.    There was a bit of tricky driving when we got back into Conwy, with people hurtling toward me in the opposite direction on narrow winding streets with parked cars on my side of the road - I think I hit the folding side mirror on something, but there wasn't any damage.  Whew.   You can imagine that I was VERY glad to be done with driving the car.  If I had to do it all the time, I'd probably get used to it - that day I felt pretty confident except for the last 5 minutes of the journey - but I don't think I'd ever enjoy it.  Now I'm wondering if I'll remember how to drive on the right side of the road when I get home.

Sunday night we packed.  I was very proud of the girls, who packed without being reminded (once we talked about what the plans were for the evening).  I think there were leftovers for dinner; I don't really remember.  Thad went out to climb the mountain near Conwy (a big hill, really) before bed, but I was tired from waking up at 5 (seagulls and other birds are REALLY noisy in the mornings) so I went to bed.  It gets light around 4 and dark around 10:30.

Oops, mooring the boat now so time to go.  To be continued.

cheers,

Wendy