Our trip to Mid and North Wales

Last Friday, we headed to Corwen, Wales, to a wonderful little bed-and-breakfast for a weekend getaway. Last year, we visited southern Wales so this year we decided to see sights in mid and northern Wales. We stayed at the Bron-Y-Graig hotel which was built in 1888. It was very child-friendly and from the sights we were planning to see over the weekend, this was a perfect location for us to stay.

Sideview of the Bron-Y-Graig

Throughout the weekend, we did "drive-bys" and saw several different castles -- Conwy Castle, Criccieth Castle, Harlech Castle, and Dolwyddelan Castle. The weather wasn't the best but it did seem to stop raining just about every time we wanted to get out of the van (except for when we visited Caernarfon Castle). ;o)

Beautiful rainbow we saw when driving through the hills of Wales

The main castle we visited was Caernarfon Castle in north Wales. The castle was built in 1283 for military purposes as well as to house royal families. The first English Prince of Wales was born in the castle in 1284. The castle became a bit more famous in 1969 when it was the setting where Prince Charles became the Prince of Wales.







Village pub near Caernarfon Castle

On Sunday, the main sight were saw was Pistyll Rhaeadr Waterfall. It was a beautiful waterfall in a great setting. We stopped into the cafe and were planning to get some ice cream before we started our long trek home; however once I walked in and saw Beethoven (absolutely HUGE dog) laying by the fireplace and smelled the horrendous smell of wet dog, I decided that we would just buy some canned soda and water and hit the road. ;o) It is definitely a good thing we did that as when we walked out of the cafe to take another look at the waterfall before leaving, we saw two black animals that I thought were cats and Mike thought were ferrets. Well, we were both wrong ... they were HUGE black rats that were running around. Ugh! It is a good thing I hadn't eaten anything in the cafe as I would have lost it on their patio. ;o) We had a great weekend getaway and are now looking very forward to our trip to Peoria for Christmas!





Kendall isn't very keen on dogs so she was in Mike's arms during this picture. ;o)