Thursday, April 24, 2014

Chapter 7 Castles and Islands

We started our day with a home cooked breakfast. As it is Sam’s and my first time in a B & B, this was a treat for us. Gill is so nice and this is such a lovely home. We were well fed to start our day. After breakfast we took a stroll down by the Straight before Irene came to pick us up. Sam has the binder with our itinerary for everyday. I think that takes some of the adventure out of it, so I rarely look to see what we are doing. It’s better to be surprised by where we end up.
Today our first stop was to see another castle. You would think we would get tired of seeing castles, but I really am not. These castles are so impressive, it is impossible to get bored with it. Today’s castles may have been the most impressive yet. It had 22 towers and a wall that stretched around the city that you could still walk on. We went through the castle and explored its rooms and some of its towers. The views were spectacular from the towers. You could see very clearly where the floors were in the towers. It was so massive in size and to think that they built the entire thing, including its walls in only four years, is mind boggling. This was done by hand and without any modern tools. Today with all our tools and modern abilities cannot manage to build structures such as this much faster. They had to haul the stone from faraway places, with cars or trains. To me it was almost mind boggling. These towers are massive and the walls are so thick. They used special pink stones to add decoration to the walls.
After we explored the castle, we walked around the town. We stopped and got meat pies from a shop in the town. This shop has won many awards for its pies and sausage. We bought the pies and took them to the key to eat them. It was very enjoyable. While we were on the key, we also saw the tiniest house in Europe. I looked very tiny, but we could only see it from the outside. We then walked on some of the walls around the city. It was very neat to walk up that high around the town, and again the views were amazing. I faced my fear of heights and even climbed the towers. and looked down.
After that we left that visited Plas Mar which is a Victorian Town house. It was neat to see how they lived. Even the ceilings were decorated.  It wasn’t just painted ceilings; there was actual molding on the ceiling in patterns. It contained their crests and other various animals, including pigs, unicorns and birds. The house had these towers that they used to take guests up to see the views and visit up there. They also had these heat blockers in the sitting rooms. The fire was so big and would get so hot that it could hurt the ladies skin, so they developed these fan type things that would block the direct heat from the ladies faces.
We then left that town and visited the summit of the Great Orem. It was very windy up there. We saw the Welsh mountain goats. The drive was amazing along the coast line. After that we headed back to Bueamaris and saw the sarcophagus of Mary. It was lost at one point and was found being used as a trough for horses. It Is now back in the church.

I’m not sure of all we are doing tomorrow, but I think I get to ride an old train. The weather should be beautiful. I am looking forward to it.

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