I got up early and walked the town walls. I almost saw the sunrise, or perhaps I should say the sun almost peeked through the clouds on it's way up. The tide is running out now, stranding the boats in the harbour. I have the cathedral bells figured out: two gongs at a quarter past, two times two gongs at half past, six total at three-quarters and then eight plus the hour's tolling at the top of the hour. Did I mention that Conwy is a small walled city? The operative word being "small." So we have decided to cross the bridge to Anglesey Island today, to see some sights. The sun never did peek out, and the rains started before we hit the island. Our first stop is a town whose name gets a whole paragraph of its own:
Llanfairpwllgywngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
No foolin. Cut and paste it into Google and see. Yup, told you so... I checked it twice then ran it through spell check, which has no idea. Why did we go there? To say we did, that's about it. I took photos of the town name at the train station, Gail shopped in the store owned by the wool mill (if we had more space or were willing to carry a check-on suitcase, we would have bought the softest blankets in the universe), and we hung out a little and basked in the glory of just being.
Llanfairpwllgywngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Been there. Done that.
You just cannot make this stuff up.
We headed through the downpour to Beaumaris. The road was pretty narrow (but not the narrowest) and lucky me, I got behind a bus that did an effective job of clearing the road for us! We saw the castle with moat, walked the town, then settled in for tea at Beau Tea Shop, a welcome treat on a cold, rainy day. My tea was peppermint, spearmint and wild mint, Gail's was cherry cinnamon. We shared our table with a couple from Wales, here for the day, and they talked us into stopping in Chester tomorrow. We learned that the Welsh are not all that thrilled with being part of, and ruled by, the UK (England). The rural people especially have the separatist mentality, hence all the national flags and red-white-green pennants. I asked them about the pension reforms. They are NOT happy, retirement is up to age 65 now (I told them they were lucky, it is 67 in the US now) and ,"They just want to work us till we drop..." No word of raising taxes either. Interesting attitudes because they were both already retired under the old system, at an earlier age, and yet they want the younger workers to have the same benefits they have. I mentioned this is much different than the US where the older generation has theirs, but says screw the youngsters... "they (young generation) shouldn't be so lazy and greedy."
They wandered into the immigration issue: not good, immigrants don't know the language, send the money they earn back home, and use services like health care; on the other hand they do the work no British citizen is willing to do. London is unrecognizable any more.
Finally, the poor work attitude of people from Liverpool (the Beatles were OK, but you can't even understand what they are saying, those people from Liverpool). "I've hired a few workers from Liverpool, and they show up for work wondering how long it is till they can go home."
The wife has been to New York (too cold, snow piled up) and the man, if he could go to the US, would go to... guess where...
Boston.
He likes Cheers and Ally McBeal on TV, and of course, the travel shows. And so a pleasant warm hour passed and we found out that the UK is a lot like the US.
We found our way to Bryn Celli Ddu where 5000 years ago there was a stone circle. A couple thousand years later a burial chamber was built on top of it. It was pretty interesting to go in it, and my inner Pagan was going crazy, urging me to strip naked and start dancing. BUT... we were getting soaked walking around and the cold wind was picking up, so we headed to our room to have a glass of wine and read till dinner.
A pig farmers commercial on BBC said, and I quote, "Give A Fork About Your Pork."
And you think I make this fowkin' stuff up.
The rains kept up, the Italian place from last night was close, so we ran over and had another nice meal. The lasagne was better the second time around, and I got a bowl of the local mussels in a wine sauce, and they were excellent.
All in all, a relaxing day.