Jared Ning

Travel

Wales

2013-06-09

Continuing on our castle quest, we moved on to Wales. We stayed in a small resort town called Llandudno. If you want to pronounce it, just pretend there's only 1 'L'. I thought Welsh was the most disorienting language we encountered.

We visited the beautiful Caernarfon (kuh-nar-von) castle. We had a really good tour guide. She gave meaning to the overlooked scratches in walls and showed us the last remaining metal left in the castle's structure (the lead pipes in the kitchen) because it was too valuable to leave in an abandoned castle. After the government restored it, it was used by the royal family as a ceremonial place. Prince Charles' investiture (like a royal bar mitzvah, I guess) was held there in 1969. The black disk in the middle of the field is where he knelt in front of Queen Elizabeth.

Llandudno, the town we stayed in, was from a different time. I don't mean like centuries ago. I mean like when shores were lined with arcades and carnival games. We walked out onto a long, tall pier that looked like it was on the verge of being abandoned but obviously still in use at some time not long ago. Maybe we were just there at the wrong time. It looks pretty lively from the website. Either way, it was very pleasant. It was very much the kind of place where everybody knew everybody. I really like small European towns.