Croeso y Gymru (Welcome to Wales!)

This weekend, I booked a trip with Don't Be A Tourist to North Wales...and it was AMAZING! As you may or may not know, despite my sometimes impulsive nature, I love planned trips. Our tour guides, David and Emma were great and knew a lot about the culture and had everybody on the bus do a sort of "speed dating" so we got to meet new people! We formed into groups and learned some interesting facts about Wales.

1. To say good morning, you say Bore da.
2. The mines in the Great Orme are 4,000 years old!!
   
3. The animal on the Welsh flag is the red dragon (I'll explain later)
4. There are 4x as many sheep as people in Wales!!

Anyway, we started off the day in Conwy, a city famous for a castle that was built by William I of England to keep the Welsh from uprising aga

inst them. It was breathtaking and absolutely confusing. So I can see how it was probably perfect for keeping enemies out..or confusing them once they got inside. After the castle, me and Andrea wandered around the city with Jessica, Quinn, and Robert in search of the smallest house in Britain. We finally found it and it's probably the size of a children's playhouse! No joke! Even I would probably have to crouch to crawl into the door...and I'm only 5 feet tall. We got back onto the bus and headed to the seaside town of Llandudno, where Lewis Carroll met the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. We got to our precious hostel that was pastel yellow and Victorian (I was in love), and took a quick r

est before we were to climb up the Great Orme!

It was really steep..so kind of tiring, but it definitely warmed us up and introduced us to the majority population of Wales...the SHEEP! At the top of the Great Orme, we had a beautiful view of Llandudno and the ocean. As we continued our hike, we made our way to the UFO hill. Apparently, it is a popular place where UFOs are frequently sited, so people write messages to extra-terrestrials with big rocks! I, myself, wrote a message to the aliens...So perhaps Alpha Phi will be on a planetary basis. Ha! Anyway, after climbing this lovely mountain, we headed off to a very filling dinner at Fish Tram Chips. After exploring the city a bit, we headed back to compose ourselves before heading out to the pub for the evening. I'm not sure what the name of this pub was, but there was a karaoke night! After much hesitation, my friend Jessica convinced me that we should go up and preform a song. We WERE going to sing Don't Stop Believing by Journey; however, it was already being done...we settled on Love Song by Sara Bareilles (kind of awkward considering our audience was 40+ for the most part). After this (unexpectedly) exciting night or dancing and singing, I headed off to bed to get ready for our next day of travel! We started off the morning with a bang...also known as a hike to Aber Falls. It was gorgeous! I haven't done that much walking in a while but it was certainly refreshing and I cannot wait to do it again. After Aber Falls, we went to Betws-y-Coed. It was a lovely small town where I got quite the meal.

It was a traditional Welsh supper including baked eggs, Welsh cheese, and potato and leek mash all baked together in a kind of casserole. (Picture included...I miss my food sometimes.) It was SO good and it came with chips! We left the city (which was literally a one street city...so interesting) and began to make our way to Allen's Sheep Farm...and we learned about 10 different types of sheep. Apparently wool is a by-product of sheep farming, and the real gain is lamb. I don't think I could eat lamb...not after thinking about the fact they're slaughtered before they even lived for a year! Anyway, we saw a demonstration of how a sheep dog herds, and it's amazing. They have this look in their eyes and it's like they're stalking their pray. Quite the spectacle. After that, I literally slept the entire ride back to Leeds except for the rest stop (it was almost a four hour drive, I think). So I guess you can say I had a pretty exciting weekend!

With this post, I wanted to post some easy ways to save money while abroad, mostly because I have plenty of time in between my classes, so here goes!

1. If you have any groceries in glass containers, definitely wash them out after you're done and use it as a cup! (I used my Nutella container as a cup!)
2. Invest in a Nalgene or aluminium water bottle...you'll be thirsty if you're doing anything strenuous or just walking a lot.
3. If you have a meal plan and they offer fruit or something you can throw in your bag (or pockets), take it! Even if you won't eat it at that meal, it makes a great snack or lunch.
4. Search around for meals, just because it's the first thing you see and you're hungry isn't a good reason to pay an extra 5 dollars, pounds, euros, or whatever for anything!
5. Pre-drink.
6. Hit up discount stores, just because your university may recommend somewhere doesn't mean it's the best. (If you're in the UK...Discount UK is the bomb.com)
7. THRIFT. You never know what you can find...
8. Before you leave, invest in good quality things you'll use a lot. A cheap umbrella isn't going to do you much good when the wind blows it inside out permanently (personal experience...)
   
   

Now it's time to do work on my *hopefully* excellent Medieval Studies paper! Adios!