North Wales pt. 1 -Big Pit, and Llangollen

Writing up the past week is a daunting challenge to say the least. But I'll try to do it in installments. The week before it wrapped up in epic stressful fashion. The two papers I had due Friday happened between midnight of Thursday night, and 3:30ish Friday afternoon. Part of this was because my laptop died. Currently don't know what's wrong with it since IT is closed for break, but I'm pretty sure it's a power cable issue and nothing too serious. Still a drag. Meant I pulled an all nighter in John's room, with him trying to sleep in the background. But it all got done and in on time. That night a bunch of the study group went to drink the bar dry, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Will be attending the summer version if it doesn't overlap with the ball. Saturday was spent lounging around and relaxing, watching movies and cooking things.

Sunday morning was a rush to get on the bus at 8:45, and the short drive to Big Pit. Big Pit is a retired coal mine, which was "named for the size of it's large shaft." We went down that shaft, 300m underground. We had the Geier children with us so we heard a lot about child labour. Our tour guides were ex-miners and were really cool to listen to. Everyone in Wales seems incredibly nice and interested in us and what we're doing here. The tour was pretty cool, if a bit chilly. Wandered around the other exhibits a bit. Learned that illegal man riding can kill. And saw miner showers with a lot of artist renditions of nude showering miners (the Brits have such a better sense of humor). We ate lunch at the caf there

and took a group picture with the mountains behind us.

Big Pit

We then headed to the Blaenavon Ironworks, where we did quite a bit of exploring. Went inside another blast furnace, and out onto a very high elevator shaft on a grate (scary), they had ironworkers cabins and a general store set up as well, I think they shot some tv series there. Wasn't our most exciting stop, but still afforded some cool views.

The elevator thing we climbed

Blast furnaces

We then drove to the small town of Llangollen (believe me that's even harder to pronounce in Welsh). We stayed in a gorgeous B&B, Caitie and shared a room that was massive, and had a jacuzzi tub. We ate dinner at a place called Greenbank, which fed us a rather fancy 3 course meal. I had salmon and prawns with little pastries, roast chicken with amazing veggies and gravy, and butterscotch creme brulee for desert. It was just the beginning of all the meals we would walk away from completely stuffed. Ended up trying to watch tv in one of the girl's rooms (failed to get sound, but watched part of a hilarious looking art film before we gave up), we ended up watching comedy central on Ken's computer before I hit up that tub. Went to sleep pretty early since we had the first of many early starts to look forward to.

Our room in Llangollen