North Wales pt. 3- Caernarvon and Llanberis

Day three brought us some time to explore Caernarvon independently, so of course the whole group went together. There are several things you should know about the group I to understand our actions:

1. We are chickens, we move together. If one person decides to eat somewhere or leave somewhere the whole group usually follows.

2. We go to bed like a bunch of old ladies.

3. We like disney movies.

4. We like to knit. Seriously, almost all of us knit.

5. We can eat enough food to feed a group of 30. And did so at every meal.

6. Bookstores are like a drug.

7. We love to play cards, esp. a game I'll call President, since it's real name is not family friendly.

So we all ended up at the castle waiting for the doors to open. I ended up exploring it with Stacey and Margaret (which is usually the case, we like taking a lot of time to actually look at things instead of just running through it). It ended up being overrun with tour groups, one group of rude French young teens, and one group of polite cute English school kids. We got stuck in both mobs at one point or another. This castle was pretty large, in decent condition, and right on the coast. It had a bazillion turrets, we climbed most of them. Wales has officially fulfilled my life's quota of stone spiral stair cases. I took a lot of pictures. We also went through the museums contained in some of the towers. As we were exiting one of them I had a pretty good wipeout. I was tired and cold at that point and not paying attention I guess, but as I was trying to step out of the museum, something failed and I fell out of the door head first. In front of all those tour groups. Caught myself, but not until after banging both knees on the stones and scraping my hands up a bit. One knee is still resolutely purple after that one.

View of the sea from one of the towers

Front of the castel

View of snow topped mountains from another tower

After the castle we all split up (for once). I tried going to the tiny maritime museum they had, but it never opened. I wandered around the marina, and just took some time out to sit on the sea wall and just watch the water. Found the group to grab a quick lunch of a pasty and pastry and met the bus. It was Stacey's 21st birthday, but it wasn't going to be an overly exciting one.

We were off to the Dinorwig Hydroelectric plant. And we were tired. We got there and explored the largest completely unrelated gift shop ever, and marveled at all the random stuff they had while waiting for our tour to start. We all had to don hairnets and green hard hats. They drove us up "electric mountain" on their bus, and showed us the main machinery, and both the lakes that power it. They drain one lake to drive the turbines into the lower lake, and pump it all back up at night. This process actually takes more electricity than they can generate, so I'm not quite sure I understand the point. Their point was that they can provide an obscene amount of power (enough to power all of Wales) in just 10 seconds if they ever need to. Which they do, for example after the FIFA world cup, when the ENTIRE NATION gets up and turns on the electric kettle. That was their genuine example. I'm making the plant sound a lot more exciting than it was. Most of us fell asleep during the tour (tour guide had a very soothing voice) or during the movies they showed us. The largest man made cavern, where all the generators are kept was cool though.

It was raining in Llanberis. It reflected our moods pretty well. Day three was supposed to be the day we hiked part of Snowdon. But it was rainy, cold, and most of us were sore from the previous day's hike (and my knee was not a happy camper). Only 4 people braved it, and didn't get all that far. The rest of us wandered into town. Nothing was open. Nothing. We explored a grocery store, we went into an empty bakery that told us to go to the place we were scheduled to eat dinner at, but we didn't want to show up 3 hours early. We headed back to the Coffee Pot near the plant. We were the only ones there, so we ordered some food and started playing cards. I got the worst hot coco I've ever had (just brown water, I even added sugar and it was still terrible) and a scone that was 90% raisins (I hate raisins). It was a flop, and the place closed at 4:30, kicking us back into the rain.

We gave up and waked to Pete's Eats, 2 hours before we were supposed to be there. The owners were really nice about it showed us to the back room and gave us a checkers/chess board. We played cards. We knit. It's a hikers/outdoorsy town, and Pete's serves this crowd. There was a lot of crazy nude art on the walls, as well as crazy pictures of their patrons, it was really chill. So we killed the 2 hours until the Geier's and the hikers showed up and feasted on greasy food. I had the fish and chips (my first since getting into the UK, shameful I know!), and they met my snobby fish standards. Also had amazing garlic mushrooms and bara brith (traditional Welsh breadish thing). The whole group laughed its way through dinner and was a big stuffed mess and we dragged ourselves to the bus.