Llanberis

This morning, Melisa and I hopped on a bus to Llanberis. We know there are trains that start in Llanberis, and go to the top of Mount Snowdon, but the website didn't say when they start running. It turns out that they aren't in operation until March 19th, which makes me sad. Nothing opens until late March! So we plan to go back sometime after spring break.

At any rate, we decided to explore Llanberis. Cady Cummings visited Llanberis when she was in Wales, and she highly recommended it. She also requested that I find a little tea and honey shop that she went to, since the owner was really nice.

We spent our day walking around Llanberis. There were a couple of cute shops, but nothing really appeared to be open. It was kind of weird, really. But Llanberis is really pretty, and I LOVE the mountains.

It was so pretty. Pictured above is Llanberis Pass. It was definitely worth a trip to Llanberis, and we're excited to go back when the trains run up the mountain! There was so much to see in Llanberis.

We literally just walked around town, and checked everything out. We saw a building called "Electric Mountain" so we went inside. From Electric Mountain, they give tours of Dinorwig, the world's second-largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. We had time...so we took a tour. We got to wear hard hats :) But we couldn't bring our cameras, so unfortunately you can't see how great I looked with my sweet hard hat.

Dinorwig is built inside the mountain. It's the largest man-made cavern in Europe. And it was pretty cool. They have a reservoir of water at the top of the mountain, and it runs down when they open up certain valves. It ends up in the second reservoir, which is at the base of the mountain. It's an interesting process, although the tour could have been a little bit more exciting. Apparently there are six engine-like things, and if they are all operating, Dinorwig could power all of Wales--but only for 6 hours, because they'd run out of water. From 12 am to 6 am, they reverse the process and send all the water back up to the top reservoir. It's not too complicated I guess--they only have 7 people working every day.

After touring Dinorwig, we wandered around town some more, looking for a place to eat lunch. We found some stray sheep, and followed them to a church. Outside was a bench, so we ate lunch there. It was gorgeous.

After lunch, we found the tea and honey shop that Cady recommended. It was cute, and the owner was very nice. Melisa and I shared some ice cream, which was a nice treat, although it was a little cold outside still. Then we hopped on a bus back to Bangor, and I napped for three hours. It was a great nap. We made taco dip for dinner--not the most nutritious, but it was very delicious :)

Tomorrow will be another easy day, although I plan on working on some papers that are due this semester. They aren't due for a while, but once I get them done, I have basically nothing to worry about. I also need to edit my sociology paper. As 40% of my grade, it better be a good paper!