Castles

You can't visit Britian without seeing castles. Wales has castles all up and down the coast, to watch for Irish invaders, and castles inland, to watch for the Celts, Pics, Saxons, and who knows what other tribes. So we had a lot of choices for seeing castles. We choose Harlech.

Harlech was on the coast, it had its own train stop, and Kirsten and MBC hadn't seen it yet. (They'd been in the UK for a while before I joined them and they had already seen many castles.) While the walls of Harlech were pretty much in tact, the interior wasn't. You could see where walls and ceilings used to be though. It was raining the day we visited, which added to the atmosphere. I feel like I need to read more medieval murder mysteries because now I get how dark and creepy castles can be. The stairs were particularly clausterphobic.

The stairs were not this light. All this light is from the camera flash.

I like taking pictures from odd angles. So here's some of my more interesting shots.

On Thursday we decided to visit Aberystwyth. It was another coastal city, and we went specifically to see the coast. It was a beautiful, clear day.

While we were exploring the city and window shopping, we found another castle. Or what was left of a castle.
We found it about half an hour before we had to go catch our bus, so we didn't much time to explore it. I had no idea what the momument is to. I didn't get close enough to see. The castle kind of surprised us because they were just these ruins in the middle of the city. Well cared for ruins, but open and public, like a park. You didn't have to pay to see this one. But we really shouldn't have been surprised. Its a city on the coast of Wales, practically every city has a castle. We probably should've expected it.