Wales and England

At the museum in Cardiff

Cardiff Bay

Will has a very steady hand for photos

About to climb through the Brecon Beacons

I was being held up by the wind here

Will, hiking

Hiking

A castle we stopped by on our way to Bath

Will kicking some butt

Monica playing pool

Will :)

Beautiful architecture

The Twinings shop in London

Les Miserables! I was practically in a box seat!

Les Mis

After the show

I can not believe that my trip is nearly at an end!! Taking this trip was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I wouldn’t take it back for the world.  If you have the opportunity to travel Europe (or anywhere, for that matter) alone for a few months, I would highly recommend it.

Will and I finished up exploring Cardiff by spending some time in the natural history and art museum; Will befriended a few of the dinosaur fossils, aw.  The art collection (except for the impressionist works), is not worth mentioning.  The sun was about to set in an hour (at 4), again (I think that is my least favorite thing about winter), so we got a late lunch down on the Cardiff Bay marina. Apparently the bay was all artificial!  Crazy stuff.

After Cardiff, Will and I drove into the secluded, middle-of-nowhere Brecon Beacons.  Oh, and when I say “middle-of-nowhere” in reference to England or Wales, it means that a town is at least a 15 minute drive away.  We got there just after nightfall, so the hostel was a bit tricky to find in the pitch-black-darkness of…. the middle of nowhere.  The wind felt like it was that of a mild hurricane, and the hostel was an old refurbished farmhouse.

So it’s dark, windy (really windy), and spooky.  We were walking down a windy driveway to the front of the hostel, in the dark when…

…wait for it…

….a GIANT plastic bag whips across our path with the speed of a freight train!  Okay, a bit anticlimactic, but it scared the crap out of me; I screamed and jumped quite a distance off the ground.  Good times!

The hostel was actually quite cozy, and after we got some dinner from a supermarket in town, we settled in and watched some movies over a bottle of wine.

Surprisingly, the wind had only barely begun to blow the night before, and the following morning it felt 10 times stronger.  That was the day we planned to hike through the Brecon Beacons.  Against the advice of reception at the hostel (Will claimed the guy was a… “poof”?), we gave it a shot anyway.  I almost got blown off my feet a couple times near the top, so I decided to forgo actually going to the highest point.  Will wouldn’t have been satisfied if he didn’t climb all the way up, so he snapped some photographs for me.

Bath was our final stop before London, and on our way we stopped outside a castle (with an expensive admission fee), and some lame mines (that weren’t even worth getting out to look at), and listened to Westlife, again.  We arrived in Bath just after nightfall and met up with Monica.  She put us up for the night, and Will showed off his cooking skills once more by baking us some delicious stuffed chicken with pasta.  The next morning we saw the rest of Bath, I learned about fly-tipping (ask Will about it, he has a great story, but it actually means dumping trash in a public space), and in the afternoon Will and I headed towards our final destination: London.

It was a looong drive.  Unfortunately we got on the road at one of the most inconvenient times (rush-hour) and crawled towards London.  And when I say crawl, I mean crawl for half a second, stop for a few minutes, and then crawl again for half a second.  Getting dinner in Reading was a bit of a relief, and by the time we got back on the roadway, traffic had cleared significantly.

Today Will was off to Oxford for the day/night, and I entertained myself in London.  I went to buy some tea and other odds and ends on Oxford street.  I stood in line for an hour, or two I think, while trying to get half-price tickets to Les Miserables.  I kept hopping from line to line, trying to get better seats for better prices than what I’d just been offered.  It was a brutal hour and a half (it was lunch time!) but  I’d never seen Les Mis before, and the hassle was worth it, I got a great seat for a great price!  The performance was sensational!!  I can definitely see why there has always been a fuss about this musical; it is a must-see!

Now I’m off to bed, and I’m trying not to think about tomorrow as my last day (and definitely trying not to think about it as my last day with Will for a while).  On the upside, I’m so excited to see everyone Monday night!! Mom and Dad, I’ll call you tomorrow to confirm everything

Jacqueline

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