It's been a very busy week and somehow Monday turned into Thursday... That's okay considering most of you saw the pictures and got the story, here's the stuff I couldn't tell my Grandparents:
The trip to Wales was awesome! The countryside is absolutely breath-taking and the people on the tour were a blast! I caught the 6:30 train on Friday (that's AM) into London and met up with the rest of the tour participants at 8. Everyone was talking and laughing and I knew right away that this would be a good time! We boarded the bus and I sat beside a nice Australian named Anne. Our tour guide, Frazier, insisted that we all go to the front of the bus and introduce ourselves, and lucky me, I had to go first. I gave my little spheel, then had to tell an embarrassing story. I told about my first month teaching, when I had a HUGE split in the back of my pants and I didn't know until I went to the loo about half-way through the day. No one had said a word and I had been walking all around school with bright red undies showing for half the day!! (I figured that would be a safe "I barely know you" embarrassing story for the group) Anyway, as soon as I mentioned Tennessee, Frazier said that his favorite place he'd been in the States was Knoxville, TN. First, let me say that Frazier is Scottish and has this wonderful accent. Then, he tells me his favorite place is Knoxville... I was instantly smitten. Everyone else did their intro. song-and-dance and their embarrassing stories were lame! Not that mine was great, but one girl said "I walked to the wrong car in a parking lot!" There's gotta be better embarrassing stories than that!! Anyway, from everyone's intro. I found out that the majority of people on the bus are from Australia/New Zealand. There were two people from Canada, two people from South Africa, two Scotsmen (Frazier being one of them), one Italian and five Americans. Four of the five Americans had ties to Tennessee. I can't get over the fact that everywhere I go, here, I meet Tennesseans!! There were a handful of 19 year old girls. Most people were 22 to 26. I was on the upper end of the spectrum at 28, but there were a couple of others that were older than me. There were also a good handful of people living and working in London, and everyone else was doing the backpacking-across-Europe-thing.
Frazier announced that our Saturday night hostel is attached to a nice little pub that will be having a Halloween party, so sometime before Saturday night we had to pull together a Halloween costume. Our first stop was Stratford-upon-Avon, where most of us found Halloween duds - thankfully, because we really didn't spend much time in a place where we could have bought anything after that. We all split up, but somehow found each other at Shakespeare's house and a group of about 10 of us when to search for Anne Hathaway's cottage. Anne (the Australian) had her
Lonely Planet: Britain and told us it was only a mile away. We were given an hour and a half in this town and by the time we finally made it to Anne Hathaway's cottage we had about 15 minutes to high-tail it back to the bus (plus find some lunch on the way). I was not smart enough to use the loo before getting back on the bus. However, I was smart enough not to be the last person on the bus. Poor Reagan and Olivia had to sing to all of us their favorite 80's song.
Three hours later we stopped at the Pontcysyllre Aqueduct. At that point I was absolutely dying, and before he let us off the bus, Frazier announced that the toilets are on the OTHER side of the aqueduct. I tried to enjoy the beautiful scenery, but gave up and power-walked the rest of the trail to the loo - which ended up being a port-a-john in the parking lot. Every once in a while I would stop to take a quick picture and then start walking again. Not the best way to enjoy the beautiful Welsh scenery!
The first day was our longest day on the bus and we were all getting restless. Frazier stopped at Conwy Castle and gave us a little while to walk around. In the town of Conwy there is the "world's smallest house," so we walked down to take some pictures. One girl, Jo, wanted her picture taken with the sign. She's probably 5' and she was as tall as the door. Then, Mark (the 6'8" Australian) wanted his picture taken with the sign - THAT was hilarious! We got back on the bus, heading to [the city with the longest name] to watch the sun set when we got stuck in a horrible traffic jam. Two hours later, when the traffic started to move again, we decided to bypass the town and head straight for our hostel in Caernafon.
By the time we reached the hostel we were all starving, so we quickly unpacked our bags from the back of the bus and found our rooms. The landlord just counted us off into groups of 4 or 6 for the bedrooms, so I ended up in a room with Anne, Olivia, Mark (three Aussies) and Brent & Austin (with myself that makes three Tennesseans). We spent most of the night laughing - I feel sorry for the other rooms, we were quite loud! Olivia and Anne decided that they
loved Austin's southern accent and went on and on about it. They were pretty damn funny about it, too! Both nights I ended up in a room with the three guys. Two nights in a row I got to see a HOT 6'8" Aussie in his tiny boxers, I was in heaven!!
I won't bore you with details of everything we saw on Day 2 or Day 3. I will say that Northern Wales is beautiful and that Snowdonia National Park is breath-taking! Saturday was a gorgeous day and we hiked part of Mt. Snowdon that morning, then spent time at Castle-y-Bere that afternoon. The ruined castle was especially cool because of its location. It sits in a valley and the view from the castle is amazing. Day 3 we hiked in Brecon Beacon's National Park (in Southern Wales), but it was rainy and hazy. Just wasn't as nice as the day before. With everything we did, there was a chance to talk to the various people on the tour. It was nice to meet all sorts of people from all over the world. I wish I would have been one of those people that just packed a bag and flew to Europe when I graduated from high school or even college. The stories these girls had were amazing!!
Our second hostel was in a town called Abergavenny. The pub was literally "just down stairs" so most of us started drinking as soon as we put down our bags. At 9:30 three girls on the tour had to perform for us (they were late getting back to the bus in Dolgellau and this was Frazier's punishment). They had choreographed this whole skit to "It's Raining Men" - they were great!! Then the pub started kareoke and that was it for the rest of the night!! Anne was the kareoke queen, she had everyone up with her at least once during the night - including me. (It's a good thing that you can't hear yourself sing with kareoke... I'll never know exactly how bad it was!) Frazier and Mark sang a duet - they were great - imagine a cute, nearly bald Scotsman dancing like he's in the 80's - I wish I had taken pictures!! At midnight, the bar closed down, so a group of us went wandering into town to see what we could find.
This is usually my favorite thing to do: wandering around at night, looking for trouble. We found Abergaveny's Castle and the kebab shop (only thing open in town after midnight). We noticed security sensors in time to not scale the castle walls (getting arrested in Wales would have been a bad thing). We met a couple of "locals" - two Belgium men who were drunk and trying to find their car. Oh! And we flashed a few cars driving down the main road...
Sunday was another long day on the bus, but we exchanged email addresses and the London group exchanged phone numbers. Not really sure if anything will come of it, but it was a great time!! I am ready to sign up for the tour of Scotland, maybe Frazier will be the guide...
