Day 18

Wales is BEAUTIFUL! We were lucky enough to have great weather today, so the landscape was gorgeous. There were rolling hills of green grass and trees with sheep and cattle everywhere.





The first place we stopped at after a three-hour coach ride was Cardiff. They refer to the big, charter buses as coaches here, by the way, and our driver assured us there was a difference. “Buses are the big red things in London,” he said. “A bus driver could never drive a coach, and a coach driver would never want to drive a bus.” He was making a joke of course, but he obviously wanted to make it clear that he was a coach driver.

Cardiff is the capital of Wales, and is definitely one of the more urban areas of the country. There was an obvious city-feel to it, but there would be random castles in the middle of town – literally medieval castles right across from a line of contemporary clothing stores – so for an American, the city gave off that whole I know I’m not in Kansas anymore vibe.





We drove around the city for a while getting an introduction from a Welsh tour guide, Alan, who joined us once we arrived in Cardiff. We had about an hour to walk around and find something to eat before leaving for Caerphilly Castle, which proved to not be enough time because we barely made it back to the coach on time. I mainly traveled around with three women I met on the ride over today, Shelley from Birmingham, Gina from San Francisco and Julie from somewhere in southern California. Long story short, we sat down at a restaurant to eat (should have just ordered fast food) and about five miscommunications later, we left the place without having eaten, running to get to the bus. It was a little irritating because I was SO hungry, but in reality we shouldn’t have expected to have enough time to sit down somewhere and eat.

Next we went on to Caerphilly Castle. One of the most interesting things I learned about Wales today was that about 20 percent of the population know and speak Welsh. It is a language that has somewhat died off over the centuries, but they are still very proud of it in Wales and all the road signs have English and Welsh writing on them. Caerphilly is a city about ten minutes or so from Cardiff, and is literally translated as “Phillip’s Castle.”









This castle was AMAZING!!! It totally made up for me being hungry and aggravated. It is one of the largest fortresses in Europe, built in the 13th Century by an Anglo Norman lord. It is second in size within the United Kingdom only to Windsor Castle. This place was honestly strait out of a fairy tale.




Alan, the tour guide told us the people, especially children, refer to it as the “fairy tale castle.” It looked just like you think a medieval castle should look, complete with a moat around it and tall spiral staircases! I went up the tallest point of the castle and took some videos (see below)!

It was an amazing country, but I think if I were to ever go back (hopefully) I would want to make it a weekend trip at the least. There is a lot to see and do in Wales, and to try and experience it all in one day when you have a six-hour round trip bus ride isn't possible. The opportunity to see it all was incredible, though, and I hope to be able to see even more of it one day! Oh - another interesting thing I learned today is that about 90 percent of nursery rhymes come from British history (my tour guide specialized in this area). In Mary had a little Lamb, Mary was actually a real girl from northern Wales who kept a baby lamb as a pet when its mother died on her family farm. This little girl had an American teacher in the 70s, and that teacher is the one who wrote the nursery rhyme around 1975.

Here are some videos of Caerphilly Castle!