Day 5

Friday 6/12/09
Today started out with a trip to Ty Mawr which is the house of the man who first translated the bible into welsh. It was a lovely drive to get there; unfortunately when we did we found that they were not open. So we took some pictures of the outside, and walked through their gardens. They had so many different colors of columbine, it was really beautiful. We next visited a Neolithic Burial Chamber, which was a short walk through some farmers field, careful not to step on any of the land mines that the sheep had left. The chamber was really quite impressive considering it had been there since roughly 2000BC. A cute and quirky local sheep dog showed up, and followed us around. He was more then happy to have Morgan throw a stick for him. Next we went to Harlech Castle, which was quite amazing. While we were there a group of kids from the Welsh Ballet Institute was practicing choreography for A Midsummer Nights Dream in the main green. Next we tried to find a place to grab some lunch… and what did we find, but an Aldi’s! It was great, we got food for lunch, dinner (with wine) and breakfast the next day for less then the cost of eating lunch out. Next we went to Portmerion which is a little village which is designed to look like an Italian village. They had a number of shops and trails to walk through the gardens. We then stopped at Criccieth Castle which is right on the ocean. It was much more ruined then many of the other castles we had visited. Mostly it was just a foundation; there weren’t any towers or rooms to explore. There were however cute little plants all over growing out of the walls, quite amazing. This evening has been relaxed, we made dinner, had some down time to blog, and read, and soon it will be time for bed. Today was really great.