Sun, Spring, and St. Davids

Last week it really felt like spring!  The daffodils are all in bloom and we had sun every day and temperatures in the 60s :) ..filled with lots of laying in the parks and enjoying the weather!

Flowers in bloom!

Sarah in Bute Park.

Wednesday we had a trip to the Welsh National Assembly (in Cardiff Bay) for our "Wales and the Welsh Language" class.  We got to meet Wales' minister of heritage, minister of education, and first minister!  This was a very cool experience and we learned about the upcoming Welsh elections, university subsidies for Welsh students, and the struggle to foster the Welsh language.

The Cardiff Bay from the National Assembly.

The highlight of Friday was definitely McDonald's new Cadbury Cream Egg McFlurry (a UK only specialty!).  A lack of good ice cream around here has made me resort to McDonalds...

YUM

This past weekend we had a Colgate trip to Swansea and St. David's as part of our Welsh Literature class.  The theme of this trip was the famous Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.  We hadn't learned about Dylan Thomas at all before we went on the bus so that, combined with the fact that this was a trip for a group of science majors, made the Dylan Thomas theme a little unideal.  But it was still a great weekend!

Saturday we left Cardiff at 8:45 and picked up our guide for the weekend, Jim Jones.  He is a part time lecturer at Cardiff and a very accomplished Welsh poet, as he is the archdruid at the very prestigious Eisteddfod, the Welsh poetry competition.  But he's also just a cute old man and a great tour guide.  Our first stop was Swansea, where we went to the Dylan Thomas museum, the National Waterfront Museum, and Dylan Thomas' boyhood home.  These were all fairly boring...but we did have an incredible lunch in Swansea!  Using our 10 pound lunch budget, me and a few other girls found this great buffet with all of the cuisine that we've been craving since being here, plus much, much, more.  Sickly full from lunch, we made our way to St. Davids, making a quick stop at Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas' summer home.

We were really happy to make it to St. David's!  It's such a cute little town on the west coast of Wales.  Plus, we got to stay in adorable bed and breakfasts, have an incredible Italian dinner, and homemade ice cream--twice!

Tea time in the B&B

Sunset over St. David's.

St. David's cross in the village center.

Finally some great ice cream! ("Celtic crunch" flavor, so good!)

On Sunday, after a great breakfast at the B&B, we had a few hours to explore St. David's, which was so fun.  St. David's has a beautiful cathedral and castle and also boasts some of the best walks along the coastal cliffs.

St. David's Cathedral

Coastal cliff walk

Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so the views of the cliffs aren't that great, but on a good day you can see all the way to Ireland!

After another round of ice cream, we made our way back to Cardiff (with stops at Dylan Thomas' boat house and grave site), where we enjoyed one last meal as a group at a local pub.

A very Welsh week...with some Irish on Thursday

I can't believe it's been a week since we were in Dublin!  This week really felt like spring with blue skies and temperatures in the 50s every day.  So many fun things this week...

On Wednesday, we went to St. Fagan's with our Welsh folklore professor.  This place is located on the outskirts of Cardiff and is recreated village of Welsh history (think Welsh Sturbridge Village).  It was really cute with the quaint old churches, general store, cottages, mill, farm, etc. from a bunch of different time periods throughout Wales' history.  But my favorite part was definitely the gardens/estate.  I don't know the history of why this was built, but there is a BEAUTIFUL mansion surrounded by so many lush gardens and it was so beautiful to walk around.  We ended our day with a cup of tea a proper Welsh tea house in a recreated 19th century-esque cafe above the general store.

Old Welsh church.

Gardens

Thursday was St. Patrick's day.  A bunch of us did a pub crawl thing called "Paddy Parade" where our t-shirts got us into 4 of the pubs/clubs downtown. Tons of gold chocolate coins + a green chocolate fountain + a foam machine = so much fun.

Mmmm free green chocolate fondue.

Today (Saturday), Lauren, Sarah, and I took an incredible day trip to the nearby village of Cowbridge.  The day started with a short 1/2 hour bus ride where we were the only people without white hair on our bus. 

Out of place at 20 years old...

We immediately loved the village as soon as we got off the bus.  When we were in the public bathrooms shortly after we arrived, we met a nice woman who told us that there was a nearby daffodil farm where you could pick your own daffodils today so we decided to add that to our itinerary! (Daffodils are the national flower of Wales and are EVERYWHERE here).

Such a quaint town!!!

We checked out the small Cowbridge farmers market where we got some delicious samples of homemade cupcakes, wine, lamb burger, and beet root hummus and chatted with each vendor for a while.  After some shopping around town, we stopped for a long, leisurely lunch at this great French restaurant called Oscar's.  We were there for over 2 hours and thoroughly enjoyed our food and basking in the warm sun at our outside table in this great village. 

Yummmy lunch

Our adventure was just beginning.  We wanted to get to the daffodil farm so we caught the bus in that direction but the bus driver told us to get off way earlier than we should have.  After wandering down a main road for a while, we decided to ask an old couple who were working outside in their yard for directions.  They were the nicest people ever!  We chatted for a while, heard their life stories (they have lived in this great cottage for 40 years!), they drew us a map, and the woman then decided to accompany us part of the way so we wouldn't get lost!  So the three of us, plus the woman and her dog, walked through some paths through the beautiful countryside for a while and then she headed back as we approached the farm (with instructions to tell the farm owners the Daniels family says hi!).  They told us to come back to their house if we couldn't find our way back to the bus later!

On our walk with Mrs. Daniels.

As we walk into the daffodil farm parking lot, who do we see but the older woman from the bathroom in the morning!  She was so happy to see us and greeted us all with big hugs!  She showed us to the field, where we all picked 20 flowers for 60 pence.  After chatting for a while, she and her husband gave us a ride back to Cardiff.  They were the cutest couple and had been out all day searching for the best daffodils and decided that the place we went was the best.  She went on and on about her love of Welsh history, the importance of friendship, and how she loves meeting young people like us enjoying Wales. 

Loving the daffodils!

Dublin

I spent this past weekend (March 11-13) in Dublin, Ireland with Lauren, Megan, Jordan, and Allie!  Lauren and I got a late departure from Cardiff because unfortunately, we have physics lab until 5 pm every Friday.  So we left Cardiff at 5:15, got to Bristol, England at 6:30, and made it to the Bristol airport with some time to spare before our flight left at 8:30.  After a long evening of buses, planes, and walking, Lauren and I met up with Megan, Jordan, and Allie in our hostel by 11:30. 

Welcome to Dublin!

We dropped our bags off and decided to head out to get a late night snack--ice cream, of course.  At midnight we celebrated Megan's 21st birthday!!!

12:00, officially March 12, Megan's birthday! Jumping with some new friends

Unfortunately, the low of the trip came next.  When Lauren, Allie, and I were walking back to the hostel, a man came up behind us and ripped Allie's purse off of her and sprinted away.  Poor Allie lost her camera, phone, credit cards, IDs, etc :( This was quite a scary experience.

Saturday morning, got an early start to our day.  After breakfast at the hostel, we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, a very historic illuminated manuscript of the Gospels (of course, this is the first thing Megan, the English major, wanted to do on her birthday).

Trinity College

We then wandered through Dublin, making stops at St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch Cathedral, both of which were beautiful (although we didn't go inside either because of the fee).  We were very lucky with our weather--weather.com predicted cloudy with a 70% chance of rain but it was all blue skies!

Lauren and I outside St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Next stop was the Guinness factory--definitely one of the highlights of the trip!  The exhibit was HUGE and included 7 floors that chronicled the process of beermaking and the history of Guinness.  It was really well done and included a pint on the top floor in a 360° all-glass room that overlooked Dublin.

The 5 of us with samples in the tasting room.

We were so hungry at this point and found a pub for an Irish feast.  We ate far more fish and chips, bread, soup, and potatoes than 5 girls ever should but we were ravenous.  Stuffed and tired, we went back to the hostel to crash for a few hours and get ready for our night.  That night we signed up for a "The Official Backpacker's Pub Crawl".  It started at 8 and we, along with 20 other kids our age, were led to 5 pubs and a club.  It was really fun and a great way to celebrate Megan's birthday!

Crawling in the pubs.

Megan, Allie, and Jordan left pretty early Sunday morning to continue on their travels (it is their spring break) so Lauren and I had all day to explore Dublin more before our flight home that night.  We had beautiful weather yet again and packed a lot into our remaining time: lots of souvenir shopping, Dublin Castle, the Chester Beatty Library (where they have the earliest copies of St. Paul's letters and Revelation!), a great cafe lunch, the Dublin National Archaeological Museum, and a delicious coffee/dessert cafe break.

Dublin Castle with the blue skies

Dublin Castle courtyard area.

Our flight left Dublin at 8 so after another long series of buses, planes, and trains, we made it back to Cardiff by 1.  First weekend overseas trip=success.

Day trip to Swansea

I can't believe it's March already! This week flew by. This week was highlighted by a post-physics lab girls dinner on Friday (complete with a great trip to KFC for ice cream), a Colgate potluck on Saturday, and an incredible day trip to the coast on Sunday.

Lauren's sister, Sam, is visiting for a few days so Lauren wanted to take her on a nice day trip outside Cardiff to show her some more of Wales. After consulting the tourism center here, we decided on a trip to Swansea. Swansea is a cute city on the southern coast of Wales on the Gower Peninsula that is home to Cardiff's rival, Swansea University. The city, itself, is great but on Sundays, there is not much going on. Therefore, we consulted our "Gower Coast and Countryside without a car" pamphlet from the tourism center and decided to go to Rhossili, a tiny village on the tip of the Gower Peninsula, that has incredible views of the beaches from atop huge, picturesque cliffs.

We left our flats a bit before 10 and caught an hour long train to Swansea (another great thing about the day--the train was only 7.20 pounds round trip!). We meandered through the Swansea center, explored a bit, and got on a bus to take us to Rhossili.

Swansea: 2nd greatest city after Paris??

The bus took about an hour because it was a local bus that made a lot of stops, but once we got out of the city it was an incredible drive through rural villages and countryside--I want to explore all of these places more!

Map of our journey.

We arrived in Rhossili and were immediately awestruck by the beauty.  We walked along the tops of the cliffs, which were covered in farmland and sheep, for a few hours.  It was only ~2 mile walk but it took about two hours because we stopped for the view like every 30 seconds.

Sam is the dot at the top of the cliff--SO incredible!

Lauren and I at the start of the walk.

Sheep EVERYWHERE.

Frolicking in the countryside.

We were pretty cold from the wind after the walk, so we got some tea in a cafe overlooking the ocean.  Our bus (the only bus from Rhossili to Swansea that day) left at 5 so in our remaining half hour we explored the town's gift shop and their extremely quaint church that was built in the 12th century!  We headed back to Swansea and had my favorite meal of my time in Europe so far at this great Indian restaurant, Miah's.  Lauren did some research the night before and this place is very highly rated.  The ambiance was great (it was in a refurbished old church) and had the BEST Indian buffet I've ever had for 8 pounds.

Best meal EVER.

We got back to our flats around 9:30.  I really want to come back to explore more of the Gower Peninsula and have another meal at the Indian restaurant!