Wales Weekend

This weekend I went to Wales with the CEA Program. Its such a beautiful country with a rich history. My friend Sarah is a history major with a concentration in Welsh history and culture so we got the best insight into Welsh life (Editor's Note: Sarah isn't actually a history major with a concentration in Welsh history, as evident by her idea that one of the areas of the ruins was where they kept the llamas).

First we hit up a Roman amphitheater

Gladiator fights would take place here. It wasn't as big as I was expecting, but I'm sure it was much more grand back in its hay day. 

 Some of the ruins

 They had an old barracks too where the gladiators would live, but I was too lazy to walk over to it.

 This is Caerphilly castle

This is probably the oldest castle I've ever been to. It was insane and gorgeous. Part of one of the towers was destroyed. 

A wedding was being held in the Great Hall. So pretty! We saw the bride and groom walking around the little town taking pictures. This would be a great place to get married.

It looks like a face ^_^

KITTY!

Some more pretty sights

Fire place

The moat that surrounded the castle back in the day is still there!

Then we popped on over to a Welsh History museum. It was all outside, which was pretty cool. This is the area around the manor house/wool mill (aka the only part I was not too lazy to walk to). Wales is known for its high quality wool, which makes sense because there are more sheep in the country than there are people.

We spent the night in Swansea (Catherine Zeta Jones' home town!). Its right on the water and was so gorgeous. The little town was so cute and we ate at this really yummy American restaurant (unintentionally).

On Sunday we went to an old mine! I actually went down into the mine shaft, which was terrifying, but also really cool. Cameras weren't allowed in the mine shaft so please enjoy the following pictures of the outside of the mine:

We finished off the Welsh Weekend at my favorite place: Tintern Abbey!! Its an old monastery and probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. William Wordsworth wrote a poem about it, and the English major in me just couldn't get over the fact that I was in the same vicinity as he was when he wrote that poem. Unbelievable.

(Lauren is always in the way of my photographs)

Oh, look! A car park! (P.s. that's our tour guide in the right hand corner. His name is Tim)

This is the bus that I spent way too much time on this past weekend. But all in all, I am glad I went. Some parts of the trip weren't that exciting, but overall I found it to be a very interesting trip. Wales is a beautiful country with a rich history that I am glad I got to learn more about.

What A Day!

I spent the majority of today making a mess in the kitchen. The fruits of my labors are delicious, but that does not discount the fact that I got marshmallow and frosting over every available surface across the kitchen. 

Devils food cake with butter cream frosting and (pink) rice krispie treats!

The cupcakes are in honor of my neighbor's birthday and the rice krispie treats are because they are delicious. Waitrose only had a mix of pink and white marshmallows so the rice krispie treats have a slight pink tint to them. But, boy, are they delicious! (You can see the small corner that I broke into there at the bottom.) I am using all of my self control to save them for the bus ride to Wales tomorrow morning. 

And to top it all off, All Time Low leaked their own album that shouldn't be out till next week, so I spent my morning jammin' to that beautiful piece of work. Check it out here! (This is partially the reason I look like I'm on crack in that picture up there. Excitement!!)

Now I have to get back to my laundry. I may or may not have forgotten to put laundry soap in there, but who's keeping track, right?

St. Pauls and a Food Market

Today has been one of my favorite days in London so far. I went to St. Pauls Cathedral with one of my classes and we did a little tour and learned some stuff about it. Photographs aren't allowed inside (which we aren't sure why. We talked about this with my professor and it really doesn't make sense). So instead I will link you to the website where there are some internal photographs here! It really is a beautiful place.

 This is a bit of the outside, and a small portion of the dome on top.

I was too close to the building to get the entire thing in my view finder. It really is huge.

 This has been excavated from the top part of the building for cleaning and repairs. It shows the kind of warping that happens to the stone facades when they are out in the open for hundreds of years. It took 15 years for service men to clean the outside of the building!

This is a nice monumental thing (not sure who is at the top though, but my first guess would be St. Paul)

 The Dome!

The newest addition to the courtyard: a bust of my boy John Donne! It was recently unveiled. There is a larger statue of him within the cathedral that just so happens to be one of the only things that survived the great fire of 1666.

Side note: when one of the professors mentioned that a sculpture of John Donne was just unveiled, a boy in my class asked his friend, "Do you know who John Donne is?" The other one shook his head and the first one said, "Me either." It seriously made me want to cry.

The back end of the cathedral

At this point we went inside and had a little tour. The inside is magnificent. It's not at all what I was expecting, but so much better. We climbed up a bazillion stairs to get to the base of the dome. The view was amazing.

The blue spiraly thing in the middle is what the Brits call "the gherkin", as in pickle. 

The "Shard"

Then we continued up another gazillion stairs and ended up at the very top of the bit that surrounds the dome. This view was even more insane than the first.

One of the clock towers

The Thames. The little round, white building is the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

Even though pictures aren't allowed inside the building, I snuck a few pictures of the staircases and inner workings of the dome. It was a tight squeeze and I felt rather claustrophobic going up. 

 Hundreds of spiral stairs going up at the most insane incline. I felt sick when I came down.

Some of the stairs were even worse than the shakey metal of the spiral cases. This stairwell was just big enough fro one person to squeeze down at a time.

After class let out I went around the corner with the intention of eating at Chef Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen. Instead, I walked right by it and stumbled into a farmers market of sorts. About 2 dozen or so stands were set up with everything from olives, to Ethiopian food, to Thai, and baked goods. I picked up the most amazing pulled pork sandwich from one of the stands and then finished it off with a slice of the most decadent chocolate cake (called a mud pie) that I have ever seen. 

I know it looks kind of disgusting, but thats because I ate half of it at the market and on the train ride home it got a little smushed in its paper cone. But let me tell you, it was the best £2 I ever spent.

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important message from the author:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAUREN RENEE GENTA

I miss you like craaaazy and I hope you have a fabulous 22nd birthday!

Remember this? :)