Oh the adventures I have ...

Well today started out to a very interesting start. A group of us had gone out last night to celebrate Halloween and well to say the very least we had a really good time, closed the club out at 3 and walked back up to the dorms and then for whatever reason I stayed up until 5 am haha. Oh well it was a good time. Well even though I was up until 5 am I got up around 9:30 because my friend Brie and I had planned to go to the cinema to see a movie in Llandudno Junction which is just a few towns over. Our plan was to go see Paranormal Activity 3 because it’s Halloween weekend and we like to scare the trousers off ourselves lol. Needless to say after only about 4 and a half hours of sleep I wasn’t on the top of my game. But we headed to High Street because Brie needed to buy a new phone so we headed to the phone store. She had a phone all picked out and was just about to pay when … the fire alarm went off and all of the stores closed down and we had to leave, without the phone. So we headed to a different phone store so she could get a phone. Then we went and got coffee to try and wake ourselves up. We waited for our bus, and hopped on just after noon. I wasn’t really sure how this whole bus thing was going to work having never really taken public transportation before, that and I was way tired from the night before. It turns out that the bus station we have in Bangor is not typical of the other bus stops on the way. Instead of the bus stopping at every bus stop when you want to get off you push a button and then the bus driver knows to stop at the next one. Now I know this sounds pretty simple but for me coming from Wisconsin where we don’t really have bus services at least not that I’ve ever used this was a new thing for me. So I began to panic a little because I realized that I had no idea what-so-ever where we were suppose to get off. I kept trying to read signs and began seeing signs for Llandudno Junction but I was still looking for something that resembled a mall or a cinema or something and since I didn’t see one I figured we needed to keep going. Well then I began seeing signs for Llandudno which is a different town and figured we had gone to far and missed our stop so we got off. We began to look around and try and figure out where we were which is really hard when you are in a town that you’ve only just passed through on a field trip at the beginning of the semester. So here we were, Brie, Chris and I. None of us from Wales (Brie’s from Iowa and Chris is from Bulgaria) none of us have smart phones or anything with internet capability and no clue of what to do. Oh I should also probably mention that Brie broke her foot 6 weeks ago and on Thursday got the okay to start walking on her foot. So we begin walking hoping that we can find some place to get some food and maybe some wifi so I could try and look up where we were on my ipod. We found a McDonalds after a bit of walking. Now this McDonalds was quite the place too, we walked in and were bombarded by a employee pushing us into a line. I tried to look at the menu but it was not a normal McDonalds menu, I was confused and tired and hungry and everything is different so I just got a soda and onion rings (yes they have onion rings!!!!) and then went to go find a table … of which there were none open. There were quite a few tables with people just sitting there talking, we were annoyed and after about 5 minutes of walking around we finally found a table and sat down to eat and I pulled out my ipod to try and figure everything out. I found that the cinema was much to far to walk to but we could get back on the bus and then just get off in Llandudno Junction. After realizing this we decided to hang out in Llandundo for awhile because there are quite a few shops and things to do to keep us busy for awhile. We went into some stores and grabbed toasties. We had about 2 ½ hours to get to the cinema so we headed over to a bus stop. There was a store right next to the stop that sold basically touristy Welsh things so we went in quick and Brie and I both bought Wales sweatshirts. I talked to the shopkeeper a little and he asked where I was from and I said the states and he asked which one so I told him Wisconsin. His eyes kind of lit up and then went back to normal as he told me that his ex wife went to Wisconsin and met her current husband there. … interesting but I digress. We went back out to try and figure out the bus just to realize that we really had no idea how to get to Llandudno Junction. We decided to go back into the shop and ask the nice shopkeeper if he knew which bus we should get on. We walked back in and the shopkeeper was talking to a lady so we waited and then told them our story and how we were trying to get to the cinema in Llandudno Junction on the bus. There response was “How are you getting to Llandudno Junction on the bus???” “ummmmm it’s on the list of stops? I don’t know,” was our response. Inside I was thinking oh crap we’ve just gotten ourselves stuck in Llandudno. Then the man asked the lady “Are you going near Llandudno Junction?” She said she was and that she would drive us there.

Ok so now we had a way there but inside I couldn’t help but think that this is the perfect start to a new horror film (not to mention we were on our way to see Paranormal Activity 3!!!) and it goes against everything I’ve ever been taught. You just don’t get in a car with a random person … especially in a foreign country. But we were desperate and figured that it was better to take a ride from this lady who seemed pretty harmless and well between the 3 of us we could have taken her if things went south; better that then hoping on a bus and ending up in who knows where. So we get in this lady’s car and she starts asking us why we are in Wales and after we told her we were students studying at Bangor she began to tell us about her son and daughter and their jobs. Then when Chris said he was going to school for film studies she began to tell us about a friend of hers from Germany who was a director and went to Ghana to shoot a film about death/funeral ceremonies or something like that. And while he was there he contracted malaria so he was in the hospital for awhile and after he got healthy enough they released him but he was not well enough to fly back to Germany yet. So one of the nurses took him into her home and nursed him back to full health. Although of course he fell in love with her eldest daughter but when he was about to return to Germany they decided to break it off because the difference was to grand. However after being back in Germany awhile he missed her far to much so he went back to Ghana and they got married. Now this lady driving us attended the wedding in Ghana. She is also an amateur photographer so when she went she of course took a camera but she decided to only take one camera and one lens. Over the 15 days she was there I think she said she took over 4,000 pictures and she has made up a book with I think about 150 of the pictures and it’s online somewhere (we are going to try and look for it). It was amazing to hear this lady’s stories. Well we got to Llandudno Junction and she tells us that she doesn’t often come here and that she’s not really sure where the cinema is but we’ll stop and ask. So we stopped and asked a young man and he gave us directions but we didn’t make it there so we asked another person. After asking yet another person we got in the right direction but made another wrong turn and wound up stuck on a bridge over to Conway. We were waiting to turn around and she was telling us about this one area that we were facing that someone who had something to do with the Watergate scandal in D.C. had a house over there and other important famous people do too. She also told us about the smallest house in all of Britain that is just down from Conway Castle. Well anyway we got turned around and found the cinema so she dropped us off and we thanked her profusely and she drove off. We had made it. Now we just had another 2 hours until the movie started but we figured that we’d had enough adventures for one day so we hung out in the game room the cinema had.

We finally got into the movie and well I was nervous. I’ve seen all the other Paranormal Activity movies and they scare the bejesus out of me but it’s a fun kind of scared. Well needless to say this movie was just as scary for me if not more than the other two. I just about jumped into Chris and Brie’s laps on many occasions. After the movie we remembered that we weren’t quite sure where to go to get on the bus. And it was almost 10 so it was dark, and we were in a very unfamiliar town and we had just watched a very scary movie. I was not excited about trying to find this darn bus stop. We remembered that there was a train station with a bus stop that we had passed on our way to the cinema so we figured we would start there. We walked there just to realize that bus 5 the one we needed to get home didn’t stop there. Luckily I had overheard another group of people talking about getting to the Llandudno Junction Flyover bus stop and that was what our bus ticket said so we followed them. We found the bus stop and waited about 10 minutes and our bus showed up. We crawled to the back of the bus and awaited our much-desired stop at Bangor. 45 minutes later we stepped out of the bus by the Bangor clock tower. We were home. All we had left to do was walk up b**ch hill and the hill by Morrisons (grocery store) and we were home free.

Needless to say it was quite the adventure of the day!!!    

To the Capital City ... and beyond

Well we just got back from our weekend trip to Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. I started off the weekend on a not so fabulous foot feeling exceptionally sick before we left but luckily that cleared up and all I ended up with for the rest of the weekend was a sore throat which I could deal with. We left early Friday morning and on our way down to Cardiff made a few stops to see more of the sites of Wales. Our first stop was in Hereford, England where we had a lunch break. Three of my friends and I found a little cafe where we got lunch and then we went to explore the Cathedral for a little while. The Cathedral has an exhibit that contains the Mappa Mundi, which is one of the oldest maps of the world with the centre being in Jerusalem. Although because our lunch took a little longer than expected we didn't get to go into the exhibit but we did get to take a good look around the Cathedral which was absolutely gorgeous. 

We left Herford and continued south towards Cardiff making another stop in Tintern to look at the ruins of the Tinturn Abbey. Tinturn Abbey was a flourishing abbey until King Henry VIII began his Dissolution of the Monasteries which put an abrupt end to all monasteries in Wales and England. Since then the buildings have fallen into ruins but with a little imagination one can really get a feel for what they were like in their prime. Even though there are no windows or furnishings or in some places ceilings and walls it is an absolutely stunning place. 

We continued onto Cardiff and made it to our hostel which was right across the river from Millennium Stadium, the home to the Wales National Rugby Union and just down from Cardiff Castle and the main city centre of Cardiff. We had Friday night free so a few of us went and explored the city centre a bit and found a nice Italian restaurant to eat at. We then went to an Irish pub for a drink and headed back to the hostel. I ended up staying up till after midnight just hanging out in the common room with some of the other people from our group but it was very nice to just relax and watch TV for a little while! Saturday morning we got up and walked to Cardiff Castle and took a guided tour of the castle. It was quite amazing. Unlike some of the other castles we've been to Cardiff Castle is mostly still furnished and decorated in the way it was back when it was remodeled. Some of the rooms were absolutely amazing. I think one of my favorite rooms in the castle was the Arab Room it was absolutely stunning. The ceiling was based off of a castle or church or something in Spain I believe I can’t really remember but either way it was absolutely amazing. We got to go through a bunch of different rooms in the castle and our guide was so informative I really enjoyed it. One of the things that he told us that the architect William Burges was a big practical jokester so in every room there was something that was just a little comical. For example in what would have been the Gentleman’s smoking room there was a scary little demon monster on the ceiling in the entrance to the room and in the family dining room the bell to call the servants was a nut in a monkey’s mouth.  Small things like that just to keep it interesting and very unique.

While in Cardiff we also got to go to the National Museum of Wales. We only had an hour there and after an interesting morning leaving the hostel I wasn’t really in the mood to go around some museum. However I knew that I would have to do my sister proud and have a look at the Art Gallery section of the Museum. I began walking around the gallery and found some very unique paintings by some Welsh artists. One I found I really, really enjoyed. The painting is called Chapel and Tip and it is by Denys Short. It was painted around the year 1959 and according to the information next to the painting it “represents two traditional symbols o industrial south Wales – the coal tip and the chapel”

Its kind of hard to see in the picture (which we were allowed to take photographs of some of the paintings so I didn’t break any rules or anything) but the child in the middle is playing with a pink ball. I think that this painting really does depict Wales. After being for a few months I can’t help but realize how dreary and somber this country can be, mostly because it does rain quite a lot here and the sun doesn’t shine that often. It has been said that the Welsh have a different psyche because they live in this kind of environment. I don’t know if I necessarily believe that. Granted I haven’t met that many Welsh people but the ones that I have met don’t seem depressed or down because the weather isn’t exactly what we in America think of as wonderful. Instead I feel like they embrace the weather and they get very excited about nice days like we had today. I also personally feel like it gives the country a different sort of edge. When we are driving around to different castles and sights the scenery around us is absolutely stunning and having a kind of gray background just enhances the colors. I know I’ve said it before but everything here is so incredibly green. Colors seem more vibrant possibly because they don’t get compared to a blue sky so they stand out and are able to shine. I think that’s why I really like this painting. It shows the gray and somber views of Wales but that bright pink ball shows that there is joy and there is color and it makes you appreciate them that much more.

On top of gaining a new perspective of some Welsh artists I was so incredibly surprised when I went into one room where the theme was French Impressionism. Some of the paintings in that room were absolutely amazing and as I was looking at one I couldn’t help but think to myself that I’ve seen something like this before. I went to look at the information next to the painting and I think my heart stopped beating for a second. It was one of Claude Monet’s. I was looking at a painting done by one of the most influential, most well known artist basically of all time. I couldn’t believe it. I continued looking through the room and found that there were 8 more Monet’s, a Vincent Van Gogh, several by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and a few by Edouard Manet. I was absolutely beside myself. I saw three of Monet’s Water lilies paintings! Masterpieces, I was lucky enough to see some of the art masterpieces of the world. It brought tears to my eyes to be completely honest.  The one thing that would have made it better would have been if my big sister had been standing next to me, I wish so badly that she could have been there with me to see them.

As if that wasn’t enough to make the day wonderful after the museum we headed down to Cardiff Bay where I got to stand outside of the Welsh National Opera House. I was in heaven. I wish that it would have been possible to go inside but considering we had limited time it wasn’t. I won’t get to see an opera in the opera house while I’m here but I am going to see Don Giovanni in Llandudno on Tuesday, which is just about as amazing. I’m so excited. I can’t believe how blessed I am to have been able to come to this wonderful country. The experiences I’ve had here will stay with me forever and always.