I know this is not really part of my Challenge but wanted to finish my trip here.
Wales is beautiful! This place would be great in the summer. Oceans, fishing, boats and great landscape all in a beautiful town. Today was a mission of weird proportions. e woke up and met the gloomy rainy day with a mission: laundry, castles and shopping. What? I know how did 3 Tough Guys pick laundry and shopping as the 'things to do on vacation' list? Simple. We need to wash our race clothes that are sitting in a trash bag in the car. Well let's start there. After 2 days of letting our muddy, smelly race gear fester in the car, we decided we can not take them in our packs and most likely will be red flagged by the security at the airport. All I need is a blind side tackle from the baggage check-in security. "Sir put the bag of poo down, now!"..."but it isn't poo, it is"..TACKLE! So we took the respective route- we found a laundry cleaner just outside Conwy in Wales. This is not your typical laundromat from the US, this place is tiny. Eight washing machines and five dryers. I think this is the only place in Conwy that does laundry service. We noticed a little lady who was working and we asked to use some machines. In your typical British accent,"go ahead lads, wash your lot over there in those." If this lady knew what we had hiding in the bags, she would have cursed us in Welsh then kicked us in the bangers. As it was, we were sneaky and stealth-like. We filled the machines with our nasty running clothes. It took two washes and six 50 pence pieces in the dryer, but the laundry was done. Now off to the castles. We drove about 30 minutes down the coast to Castle Caernarfon. This was a castle built by King Ed the 1st and was the "royal palace" before the royal palace. This castle was in very good condition. It was used to hold royalty, government officials and guest alike. Very neat castle with the entire run down of history from the 9th century to present day. The displays had explained, in great detail, every war up to the Iraq war and all the roles each country played. Out of all that history and well though out displays, the thing I took away from it all is the the British had a goat as a mascot in every war. Georgia Football has it's Bulldog, Budweiser has the Dalmatian and Paris has her Bedazzled Chihuahua and the British have their goat. Joel and I immediately went into goat character from the Adam Sandler CD's from the 90's..."you soldiers have fun at the Ragu festival, I will stay here watching the freaking cannons go off and have the Sargent beat the crap out of me."
Wales is beautiful! This place would be great in the summer. Oceans, fishing, boats and great landscape all in a beautiful town. Today was a mission of weird proportions. e woke up and met the gloomy rainy day with a mission: laundry, castles and shopping. What? I know how did 3 Tough Guys pick laundry and shopping as the 'things to do on vacation' list? Simple. We need to wash our race clothes that are sitting in a trash bag in the car. Well let's start there. After 2 days of letting our muddy, smelly race gear fester in the car, we decided we can not take them in our packs and most likely will be red flagged by the security at the airport. All I need is a blind side tackle from the baggage check-in security. "Sir put the bag of poo down, now!"..."but it isn't poo, it is"..TACKLE! So we took the respective route- we found a laundry cleaner just outside Conwy in Wales. This is not your typical laundromat from the US, this place is tiny. Eight washing machines and five dryers. I think this is the only place in Conwy that does laundry service. We noticed a little lady who was working and we asked to use some machines. In your typical British accent,"go ahead lads, wash your lot over there in those." If this lady knew what we had hiding in the bags, she would have cursed us in Welsh then kicked us in the bangers. As it was, we were sneaky and stealth-like. We filled the machines with our nasty running clothes. It took two washes and six 50 pence pieces in the dryer, but the laundry was done. Now off to the castles. We drove about 30 minutes down the coast to Castle Caernarfon. This was a castle built by King Ed the 1st and was the "royal palace" before the royal palace. This castle was in very good condition. It was used to hold royalty, government officials and guest alike. Very neat castle with the entire run down of history from the 9th century to present day. The displays had explained, in great detail, every war up to the Iraq war and all the roles each country played. Out of all that history and well though out displays, the thing I took away from it all is the the British had a goat as a mascot in every war. Georgia Football has it's Bulldog, Budweiser has the Dalmatian and Paris has her Bedazzled Chihuahua and the British have their goat. Joel and I immediately went into goat character from the Adam Sandler CD's from the 90's..."you soldiers have fun at the Ragu festival, I will stay here watching the freaking cannons go off and have the Sargent beat the crap out of me."
We had visited several castles and all were equally impressive. There is something to be said about how these structures were constructed considering they didn't have pneumatic equipment, power tools or diesel tractors and cranes. Clever, simple science and elbow grease is all it took to fabricate these monstrosities - pretty fascinating. Although there is something somewhat shameful about seeing these marvels and still wanting to stand at the highest part of a castle wall to scream down to people below that their father was a hamster and their mother smells of elderberries. I'm and idiot, no need to state the obvious, but something tells me you are thinking the same thing:)After a long day of driving the beautiful Wales country side and coast line, we headed back to Conwy to wind down. We hit the streets of this quaint yet busy town to bustle through the shops. They have some of the neatest little shops -some with toys and some that were all books featuring Welsh authors or about Wales. I stepped into one store where a gentleman was asking the proprietor to buy his ex-wife's dishes because he is going to prison for 6 months and needs the money for when he gets out. Let's just say that I would have never thought that someone who looks like Mr. Belvedere would ever be going into prison let alone sell his wife's dishes for cash. I didn't stick around long enough to see if the transaction was successful or the reason for Mr. B to check-in to the Wales pen, but I think it is safe to say that ex-Mrs.B is eating on paper plates tonight.
As we wound in and out all of the stores we landed in this neat little winery. It has a great selection of wine and loot from the local breweries. We sampled some mead and wines, tipped our hats to the lady behind the counter wearing overalls and a pencil in her hair and made our way for a Guinness and some food. We landed at a warm pub, ate some fish and sat by the fireplace watching "a match on the tele." It was cuddly, but we needed to keep moving. As we made our way down the hill we ended up at a pub called Liverpool Arms. This pub is on the wet, stone road that contours the ocean side and hosts our hotel directly across the water. We went in to have one last toast to the trip and to our good times. We even had a four-legged friend toast with us, which in no way was weird. We toasted to our trip with a beer called Stella 4. This will lead into my closing....the best and almost disturbing (because it might be true) quote of the trip.Quote of the day:
"Stella 4 takes the wife beater out of it."- The barkeep at Liverpool Arms after asking what the difference between Stella 4 and regular Stella Artois
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