Caernarfon Castle

Melisa and I met at 8:45 and walked to the bus station this morning. We asked someone which bus to get on, and then we just hopped on. It was only 2.50 GBP per person, round trip, and it was a fairly short bus ride. Once we got to Caernarfon, we opted to just wander until we found the castle. Castles are hard to miss!

We did kind of circle around the castle before we figured out how to get there. But it was quite easy to find. Caernarfon Castle is massive. It was built to be a fortress for King Edward I. When he took over Wales, he built a series of castles in a ring around the Snowdonia Mountains. Caernarfon was built to "echo the banded walls and polygonal towers of the Roman city of Constantinople," according to this postcard I bought. I learned about the "ring" of castles when we watched this really cheesy video in a cold, drafty theater in the castle.

We spent a few hours wandering around the castle. It was pretty impressive. There were three levels in the walls, where you could wander, and lots of towers and turrets. The stairs in the towers seemed never ending! I feel like my body may hate me again tomorrow, but it was definitely worthwhile.

After exploring the castle, we wandered around the town of Caernarfon for a while. There were tons of cute pastry shops, and tiny little gift shops. It was a little chilly today, we didn't wander as much as we could have. But we were lucky again...it was another sunny day!

After taking a bus back to Bangor, I took a nice, long nap. It was necessary! And then Melisa and I made tuna melts for dinner, which was a huge success. We chilled the rest of the night. We are going to the "buddy brunch" tomorrow...it's Valentine's Day, so breakfast is two for the price of one! Melisa is going to be my date for Valentine's Day, since I'm a little bit far away from John. It's nice to have Melisa here to go places with...we've decided the someday we are going to be on The Amazing Race together. We're figuring out travel, etc. when planning for Spring Break. We'll be professionals by the time we leave here!