The MrsAdventures of Beki: 27/1 Caernarfon

27/1/2010 On to Caernarfon

If there's one thing Randy needs to see when he goes overseas, it's a good castle. With this in mind, I made plans for us to stop in Caernarfon on the way to the big music festival. Caernarfon Castle is possibly Wales' most famous castle built in 1283. It looked pretty awesome when I googled it.

So...on the 27th, we had our big breakfast, and were called "wussies" by our B&B host when we could not eat all the sausages. If you are unfamiliar, a standard UK B&B breakfast consists of two eggs, 4 pieces of toast, bacon, two big fat sausage links, baked beans, a large mushroom, and half a fried tomato, plus tea or coffee and juice with cereal and fruit and yogurt being optional.

Example:

We just couldn't do it that day but we came close. Anyway, after that, despite the urge to take a nap, we hit the road for Caernarfon.

It was a pretty drive, and the scenery was much more photogenic than I was on that day!

We arrived at Totter's Hostel late in the afternoon--a cold and rainy afternoon. The hostel is right in the shadow of the castle, and very near the water (right through the arch behind me).

Not only was Totter's friendly, but parts of it were super old and cool looking...here is Randy by the kitchen storage area where you can see newer walls put over the ones that are from the 1600's.

This is the dining room, where the stuffed moose with one antler up and one antler down made us miss our beloved Diego just a bit.

And the town itself was a good-looking town...

Even non-castle parts of the town looked kind of castle-y.

Alas, the weather and the time prevented us from getting to the castle on Day 1 here, so we opted for the local tavern and were kind of pleasantly surprised to find that the locals spoke Welsh much more often than English.

Although I had been using a phone app called "uTalk Welsh," I didn't really get the opportunity to speak Welsh to anyone, but I was quite pleased with myself when standing in line at the post office and again at the pub, I was able to tell Randy, "Six! That guy just said six! I understood it!" - Woo hoo. Small victories.

The pub's English name "Black Boy" might not go over too well in the States, but it worked here and when I told Randy he needed to try Brains beer because it was Welsh, he was a bit apprehensive, but ultimately delighted.

For most of the afternoon before hitting the pub, we wandered around the town, got some groceries and watched some movies in our room. We had the attic room so while most of the guests at Totters stay in a bunk room, we had the whole top floor to ourselves. Here' s a pic: