Last Two Field Trips

We had our last two field trips this past couple weekends. Two Sundays ago we went to Conwy Castle (above) and the Welsh Mountain Zoo at Colwyn Bay. Conwy is a neighboring town to Bangor and its traditional industry is the mussels industry. When we arrived at Conwy we walked the perimeter of the old town on top of medieval wall there. It was fun because we got a different view of the town and the castle. This wall is mostly intact, 3/4 of a mile long, and has 21 towers. It was built with the castle to act as part of the defence. The castle was another built by King Edward I in the late 1200s, and it is considered to be one of his most impressive. It was a little different than the others because there seemed to be more rooms and less open space in the center, and in the middle of the castle was a giant well. Though the dark winding staircases can get a little tiresome, my favorite part of the castle were the towers.

The zoo was fun. It was small but had some interesting animals. The main reason we went were to see the British species such as the red squirrels and mountain goats but we saw tigers, monkeys, penguins, and other animal too. My favorite part was watching the chimpanzees. They lived in what looked like a giant room with no ceiling and giant glass windows for us to see in. They seemed to have there own little gangs and personalities. While we were watching them, one ran right up to our window and threw itself at it a couple times while yelling. Fortunately, the glass was sturdy, making it awesome instead of terrifying. We also watched a bird show with owls, parrots, and a penguin parade at the end. We were told there is a huge zoo in Chester, so we now want to go there before the end of the semester.

Our last field trip was a little one to Penrhyn Castle, a country house built in the early 1800s. The Pennant family who lived there made their fortune from Wales' slate quarries and Jamaican sugar. It is estimated they bought it for 150,000 pounds which today would be 49,500,000 pounds or $79,200,000. The house is incredible; it has an amazing staircase with intricately carved stone railings, walls, and ceiling. There was a bed entirely made from slate and a Victorian kitchen full of giant copper pots. The family was friends with the royal family and on numerous occasions, they would come stay at Penrhyn, including Queen Victoria herself. There are so many rooms, one could easily get lost, and I decided it would be the ultimate place to play hide-and-seek. Penrhyn also had some beautiful gardens. We visited a walled in Victorian garden which was very beautiful despite the light rain. There was also a swamp garden. It looked like a mix between a swamp and a jungle. It had the ginormous plants with leaves that were 2-4ft big. It was a wonderful day and a perfect place for our last field trip.

Ireland

Part of the program is a 6 day trip to Ireland during the last week of our spring break. We spent the first half on the east coast in Dublin and the second half in the west coast in Galway. When our director said we were taking a ferry over I did not expect the giant ship we took with tables and a restaurant and a little theater section. I guess I didn't realize how many people travel between Ireland and Wales. Unlike Cardiff, there were few arranged tours in Dublin. However, our director gave us a couple walking tours, pointing out different parts such as the Liffey River; Oscar Wilde Memorial, a famous Victorian writer; and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Otherwise we were on our own. We checked out some museums and art galleries, and a group of us attended a Catholic service on Easter. Dublin was OK, it just kind of felt like another big city to me. The only time I really felt I was in Ireland there was when we listened to the Irish bands playing in the pubs. That is quite an experience itself. The pub is literally full of people and pretty much impossible to move around in, and the music varies from folk songs to classic rock.

After a couple of days in Dublin, we packed up and headed to Galway. This was a very different experience from Dublin. It is the fifth largest city in Ireland but still only 1/7 the population of Dublin. Galway is home to the Claddagh ring. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, it is a ring with two hands holding a heart with a crown on top, representing friendship, love, and loyalty. Before I came here I didn't know that different positions for the ring meant different relationship statuses. When on the right ring finger, it means single if the heart points toward the fingertip and taken if pointed inward. When on the left hand it means engaged or married. Our director gave us short walking tour of Galway, too, and on this tour we visited the Galway Cathedral. This one doesn't have the same Gothic architecture like most of the others, the inside is mostly marble. What is interesting about this cathedral is that right next to a mosaic of Jesus Christ is a smaller one of John F Kennedy. He was the first US president to visit Ireland and first Irish Catholic president so the Irish have great respect for JFK.

During our time in Galway, we visited the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher. We took a ferry, this one more like what I had expected the first time, to the largest of the Aran Islands and biked around it all day long. I haven't rode a bike in a ridiculously long time so I didn't like the biking at all. It took away from enjoying the amazing views because I was too busy trying not to accidentally swerve into on coming traffic. We did get off the bikes for a little bit though to see the cliffs (top left). They were incredible! You have to lay on your stomach for safety but you can go right up the edge and look over. They drop straight into the ocean. We had fun there taking pictures and looking over the edge. The Cliffs of Moher (right) which we saw the following day were even more impressive because they are twice as tall, the highest being about 700 ft. Most of the cliffs are fenced off because it is Ireland's most visited attraction, but a group of us took a little dirt path that lead to an open spot. We took more pictures of us on the edge and loaded the bus to head back to Galway. That night a group of us walked over to the bay and watched the sunset (bottom left), making a perfect last night to out trip in Ireland.

Stratford-Upon-Avon

After hearing all about J.K. Rowling in Edinburgh and all about Jane Austen in Bath, England, we next went to Stratford-Upon-Avon where we heard all about another famous writer William Shakespeare. Stratford is another quaint town in England and is also the birthplace to William Shakespeare. We got there Tuesday afternoon and checked into our hostel which was unfortunately 1.5 miles from the city's center. It was a different hostel from the others I have stayed at so far. It was an old house in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town. It wasn't as busy either, and most of the guests were families which was a first for my hostel experiences.

We didn't do much the first day but the second day we took a bus into town and started our day by visiting the graves of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway. I had expected it to be a typical gravestone in the cemetery, but his grave is actually inside the church, right in front of the alter. Molly and I then walked along the river and saw little baby ducks and Stratford's swans. We stopped in the RSC Theater (Royal Shakespeare Company), looked through the gift store, and took pictures of the Swan Theater where Shakespeare use to put on his plays. Molly and I then walked over to the house where Shakespeare was born. We could havegone in but decided to check out Anne Hathaway's cottage instead. It was just a little outside of the city's center but didn't take too long to get to. It was a cute thatched house with a flower garden and a path through the woods. We spent a couple hours there and learned the random interesting fact that carrots weren't orange until after the 1700s. We then went back into town; and not knowing what else to do, we decided to check how much a ticket for a play would cost. It turned out that if we had asked when we had visited that morning we could have gotten a student rush ticket or something that would have gave us prime seats for only 5 pounds. Instead, we had to now pay a little bit more for limited view seats. But we didn't know what else to do, so we decided to go for it. We ended up buying tickets for Macbeth in the RSC Theater.

We went back to the hostel, dressed up nice and came back into town for supper and the play. The play started off slow and I had a horrible time understanding the dialogue. Then in the middle of the first half, the fire alarm went off. At first, everybody thought it was part of the play because they had been using lots of loud noises and earlier even set off some "explosions." We eventually did figure it out though and had to wait outside for a few minutes while they confirmed that nothing was engulfed in flames. After that the play started to pick up momentum and make more sense. Also, during intermission, Molly discovered that the actor playing the vicar was the bad guy's announcer in A Knight's Tale. It wasn't a really big role or anything but still fun to see someone you can recognize from a movie. The play was kind of morbid (definitely a tragedy) but had poetic justice at the end which I liked. In the end, I was glad we went to it and thought it was a perfect way to end our trip in Shakespeare. The next day we made our way back to Bangor and recuperated before we set out again, this time to Ireland with the whole program.

Bath

Our second week of spring break was mostly spent in Bath and Stratford-Upon-Avon. Bath is a gorgeous city. It lies in the bottom of a very pretty valley. Most of Bath's buildings are made from sandstone and of either Roman or Georgian architecture. It was built by the Romans in AD 43 as a spa resort so it doesn't have the same feel as any of the other cities we have visited in the UK. It didn't really feel like we were in England, and the fact that is was warm and sunny the entire two days we were there only further helped the sensation.

The first day there we went on a Jane Austen tour, visited the Roman Baths, and went inside Bath Abbey. Jane Austen lived in Bath for a while, and a few of her books take place there. The tour was pretty much about what the city would have been like back in her day and where different events for Jane Austen and the characters occurred. Though I respect her as a writer, I have never read any of her books; so the tour was kind of confusing. By the end of the tour, I had no idea as to whether the places being pointed out to me were associated with real or fictional people.

The Roman Baths (above) were really cool. It is the only hot spring in Britain and the Romans used it to create a temple and bathing facility. Visiting the bathes were completely different than what we had been seeing and the way they set up the structure is interesting. They even had a sauna and everything. I enjoyed it. Bath Abbey is pretty much right next to the Roman Baths. It looks like all the other cathedrals: beautiful and detailed. We came on Palm Sunday and we happened to come at a time they had a 15 minute afternoon service so we joined in. It wasn't anything big at all but nice to recognize Palm Sunday in some way.

The next day, we walked up to Prior Park Landscape Gardens, a park on the edge of town. It was a bit of a walk, mostly up a steep hill; but we found it with little problem. Walking up the hill was worth it though. The park had an amazing view of the city. We spent the morning there just soaking in the sun and fresh air and taking pictures of the view. When back in town walked around the shops a little and saw the King's Circus and the Royal Crescent. They are two of Bath's most known building complexes (Georgian architecture) built in the 1700s. What is cool about these structures is that one forms a perfect circle and the other forms a perfect half-circle. The next morning, we got back on yet another train and headed to Stratford-Upon-Avon.

London Again

Our second stop during spring break was London. We have a friend from Central studying there this semester so we stayed with her for three days. We started out the first day by touring the inside of Westminster Abbey. It is so beautiful! The abbey has detailed stone work and numerous sculptures. Much of the British Royalty's tombs are there as well including Edward I (conquered Wales), Elizabeth I, and her rival Mary Queen of Scots. The abbey also is the resting place for Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Chaucer, and other historical individuals. Unfortunately, Westminster was one of the many places we visited were no photograohy was allowed.

Our other main stop for that day was the Tower of London. The Tower of London reminded me of Edinburgh Castle because they are both huge castles set up with miniature museums inside. It was interesting though. A fortress has been there since 1066; and over the years numerous famous prisoners were kept there including William Wallace, Henry VIII's sencond wife Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth I during her sister's reign. We saw knight's armor and England's crown jewels. The Tower of London also has a royal mystery linked with it for Edward IV's two sons disappeared there in 1483 and their uncle took reign after Edward's death. Their skeletons were found in 1674 under a staircase, and a few theories exsist as to what happened.

Our second day was a busy day. We started out at the British Library, where we got to see original papers from Da Vinci, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Jane Austin and more. We even got to see the Magna Carta. We spent longer than we had thought we would in there so the end of the day felt a little rushed but we still got everything in. Next, we checked out Bourogh Market, a place with so many food stalls, one can actually get full just trying all the different samples. It was packed and hard to move around in, and the stalls seemed to never end. We didn't buy much there but it was fun to see what a market in London is like.

After lunch we walked along the Thames and saw Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Millenium Bridge, and St. Paul's Cathedral. We would have gone in some of the places but we didn't have much time and we didn't budget for ithem. We then took the Tube (which I can confidently find the right platforms now) to Hyde Park, one of the largest parks in London. It was a little cloudy but still a beautiful day. We walked a little ways along the Serpentine, and though I wanted to see the Gardens there too, we didn't have time to explore much farther than that. So we made our way out of the park and headed to the National Gallery.

On the way to the gallery we walked through Piccadilly Circus and saw the giant electronic screens. We didn't stay there long though, we just walked past it on our way to the National Gallery. In front of the gallery in Trafalgar Square, they put up a clock with two faces counting down until the summer olympics in London. Apparently, the clock broke down right after they put it up though because the one side said there is 469 days and the other side was still in the 500s. We then spent a few hours in the National Gallery which is awesome! We saw Da Vinci's cartoon, a few of Rembrandt's self portraits, and Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. Most of our time was spent in these time periods, but when we were getting hungry we decided to skip a few years to the Impressionist period. There, we saw some of Van Gogh's work including his sunflower painting and some more of Monet's smaller waterlilly pieces. We then got pizza and called it a night. We had been walking all day, but with the craziness of London I didn't notice how much my feet were hurting until we walked out of the gallery. After that day, I'm surprised my feet still function.

Our last day, we didn't really spend in London. We took a day tour to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Oxford. Unlike the Highland tour, this one was not cheap by any means and our tour guide was not quite as easy going. However, he was still pretty nice and the trip was well worth the cost. In the beginning, our tour guide mentioned English was not his first language and decided to speak his native tongue to see if anyone could guess. Molly and I knew it right away; it was Welsh. Turns out, he is from Conwy, a town right next to Bangor. We were pretty proud of ourselves. Our first stop was Windsor, the Queen's home away from Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, she was not there. We got to see some of the rooms on display; they were so grand and full of paintings and elegant furniture. It might have been the coolest stop of the day if we had had more time. Unfortunately, we had to rush through the rooms and didn't get to see any of the rest of the castle. If I ever get a chance to go back to England, I'd like to go there again and take my time.

Our second stop was Stonehenge, the reason I took this tour. Stonehenge isn't complete anymore; only 30% of the stones remain. The others were either knocked down by the Romans long ago or sold off as material/souvenirs when the site was still privately owned. We were forewarned that it isn't as big as people expect it to be so we weren't surprised by its size when we got there. The stones are big and massive, just not as big as pictures lead you to believe. It is still very impressive though. The largest stone weighs 45 tons and takes 100s of people to move. The stones are also buried 8 feet deep to keep them stable so what you see from the top is only 2/3 the actual stone. What I found most impressive is that these stones weren't from around the area. The smaller ones were brought in from Wales by boat, and the larger ones were taken somehow from some hills in England. We couldn't get to close to the stones but it was still nice to walk around them and wonder how the workers created it with such simple tools.

Our last stop was Oxford. A lot of the builidings tourists aren't allowed to enter because it would distract the students, but they do allow us into Christchurch College where a scene from Harry Potter was filmed. It is a scene from the first movie where they come to Hogwarts for the first time and are greeted by the main lady professor. I honestly am not sure what scene this is, but I guess I can at least say I was there. We also got to see a dining hall that was part of the inspiration for the Great Hall in the Harry Potter movies. It did look similar but was smaller and had no enchanted ceiling of course. We walked around some other parts Christchurch College but didn't see much more. We headed back to London and called it a night. Overall, our trip had been wonderful. Our next stop was Bath.

Scotland

The first five days of our three-week spring break, Molly and I traveled to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Edinburgh is a unique city full of history and thought to be one of the most haunted in Europe. We first headed to the Royal Mile, a road that stretches from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace (the royal family's house in Scotland). The road is actually a Scottish mile long, 1.07 miles, which is a measurement thought to be created by the Scottish simply to annoy the English. The Royal Mile has tons of souvenir shops selling exactly the same thing and has bagpipe music playing everywhere.

The day we arrived, we took a free three-hour walking tour and learned about everything from the infamous murderers Burke and Hare to how J.K. Rowling used parts of Edinburgh while writing the Harry Potter books. During the 1700s, the medical school in Edinburgh needed cadavers so many people dug up fresh graves and sold the corpses to the school. Burke and Hare decided instead of waiting for people to die, they would just kill homeless people. They killed 17 victims before they were caught. Burke was viciously executed and his body donated to Edinburgh Medical School where it is still used for classes today. We also learned lots about J.K. Rowling. We went to the cafe where she wrote the first two Harry Potter books and the school that inspired Hogwarts. We also went to Greyfriar's cemetery where she used various names from gravestones such as Tom Riddle Jr. and Sr, Moodie, and McGonagall for character names in her books. Since Edinburgh is supposed to be one of the most haunted cities in Europe, we also took a ghost tour that night. It was more historical than frightening which I preferred, and we learned a lot about the hundreds of people who died during the witch trials here, a royal cannibal, and the ghosts that haunt Arthur's Seat.

The second day we did an extremely large amount of walking. First we climbed up part of Arthur's Seat, an inactive volcano in the middle of the city. All the tourist attractions are in one compact area so you don't realize how big the city really is until you see it from Arthur's Seat. We sat and enjoyed the amazing view for a while before we made our descent and headed to Calton Hill. This hill is much smaller but still an beautiful view. On top of it is Scotland's National Monument which is also referred to as the National Disgrace. The monument had been intended to resemble the Parthenon however, they ran out of money after only building half the columns. Refusing to accept money from a neighboring town, the monument has remained unfinished for years now. After lunch we headed to the Botanical Gardens. This was quite frustrating for the gardens were off of our main map and the brochure's map was inaccurate so it took three times longer to find it than it should have. By the time we got there, our feet felt like they were going to fall off. The gardens were lovely and we walked around a little bit before we calling it a day.

The next day was by far my favorite day in Scotland. We went on a Hairy Coo Tour, a free tour that takes you around the Highlands. At 8 in the morning we were greeted by a young man complete with kilt and a think Scottish accent and loaded a small orange bus. We first visited William Wallace's monument and learned about how completely inaccurate the movie Braveheart is. William Wallace is actually a 6 foot tall psychopath who killed his enemies quite maliciously, and the term Braveheart actually historically refers to the Scottish King Robert the Bruce. After a few other little stops, we made our way into the highlands. We stopped at a few lochs and enjoyed the serenity of them, got some amazing views of the lower highlands, and even saw a full rainbow. It was so pretty (despite the fact that the weather was being extremely bipolar). Next we pulled the bus over at a pasture to feed some hairy coos (above). The tour comes here so often the hairy coos recognize it and come racing to the fence line when they see it coming. We finished the tour with The Forth Bridge, an engineering marvel when it was built, and some Highland Toffee. The Highlands are beautiful, and I hope to someday visit northern Scotland where it looks more like the fjords.

The fourth day we visited the National Museum of Scotland and Scotland's National Gallery. The museum was huge! It has 7 levels and goes from the beginning of the Earth to the recent decades of Scotland's history. We saw some interesting things though like a Viking crypt; a 7 ft tall sword the highlanders used; and a the now stuffed Dolly, the first cloned sheep. The National Gallery of Scotland was much smaller. It had a few famous artist but I didn't recognize any of the pieces.

We didn't do much our last day in Scotland. The main thing was visiting Edinburgh Castle (right). Like Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat, the castle has an amazing view. It is numerous buildings now used as miniature museums. We didn't go through them all but we saw Scotland's Crown Jewels, Prisoners of War exhibit, and a giant cannon from medieval period that I could have easily fit in to. Our other big event that day was trying haggis, a sheep's heart, liver, and lungs all ground up together. Molly and I had decided we would order haggis and another meal to split so we would have a back up if the haggis was disgusting. What we hadn't expected was that the haggis would be spicy which was not good because our backup was an enchilada which was also spicy. Our mild taste buds struggled but we both managed to finish our halves. My cheeks were literally hot to the touch the rest of the night and I don't intend on ordering either dish ever again.

Cardiff

We had our three day trip to Cardiff, the capital of Wales, this past weekend. We loaded the bus Friday morning and made two stops before reaching Cardiff. Our first stop was Hereford where we visited a cathedral and had our lunch break. The cathedral now standing there was built in 1079. It was beautiful as all the others but what made this one unique was the Mappa Mundi. The Mappa Mundi is a 13th century map of when Jerusalem acted as the center of the world. It is greatly distorted and of course much of the world had not yet been discovered, but had about 500 drawings marking towns, biblical events, people, etc. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures.


Our next stop was Tintern Abbey (pictured above). This current structure dates back to the late 13th century and lies next to the Wye River in a beautiful valley. It was as large as the massive Anglican cathedral in Liverpool but built centuries earlier. King Henry VIII dissolved Tintern Abbey in 1536 during his quest for control over the church in Wales, and now only some of the walls and columns remain. The day was gorgeous and Tintern Abbey was beautiful. I could have stayed there longer and wandered around but we had to continue on to Cardiff.

We arrived in Cardiff around supper time. This hostel was so much nicer than the one we had in London. Here we had rooms with only 4-6 people and actual bunk beds. Also it sat right across from Millennium Stadium. We walked around the center of Cardiff for a while, ate at an Italian restaurant and called it a night.


Saturday was a very busy day. We first walked to Cardiff Castle, and it was amazing. Unlike the other castles we had seen so far, this one had rooms set up similar to how they were for the family who last lived in them. It is a combination of an old Roman fort from first century DC, a Norman "motte and bailey" (above), and a gothic-Victorian living space. The Bute family lived in Cardiff Castle around the Victorian Era; the second marquis of Bute made all his money from the coal industry and his son was born the richest baby in the Europe. The third marquis hired architect William Burges to design the interior into the amazing yet kind of crazy space it is now. The lady's drawing room, though the smallest in the house, was the most expensive because the ceiling was painting with GOLD. The dining room (above) can now be rented out for 500 pounds an hour, and the original bedding in the master's bedroom cannot be displayed for its fringe is made from 24 karat gold. Another room had rubies and emeralds embedded into the woodworking and a table made so a grave vine could be inserted into the middle for guest to eat grapes right from the vine. The third marquis is impressive too. He could read and write 21 languages, including ancient languages such as Egyptian and Runic (Viking!). Needless to say, I was amazed by this castle.

Next we walked to the Millennium Stadium, actually built in 1999. This is the home to Wales National Rugby team. It is the second stadium in Europe to have a retractable roof and hosts numerous events from football games to concerts to monster truck rallies. The stadium was cool to see and something different, and our guide, a die-hard rugby fan, was quite entertaining. After our guided tour of that, we made our way to Cardiff Bay. The bay played a major role in exporting Wales' coal until World War II; it was however revitalized and transformed in 1999. Unfortunately, the restaurant we went to was not the fastest; and we didn't have time to visit explore the bay.

The last planned stop of the day was to St. Fagans, a museum of Welsh life. It reminded me of the outdoor division at Vesterheim for the museum consisted of older buildings representing life throughout Welsh history that were brought in from other location in Wales. It was fun to wander around the grounds and see thatched houses and a cockpit where they used to have illegal cock fights. My favorite part of the museum was the Victorian garden though. It was really pretty, and I could picture ladies in fancy dresses strolling around the terraces. After St. Fagans, we were free to do whatever for the night so a group of us got Chinese food and watched the Rugby game, Wales vs. France. I understand a little rugby (they can only throw to players behind them, have to touch the ball to the ground to score, ...) but not the whole thing; enough to follow the game. Sadly, Wales lost. They are usually an exceptional team but this has been an off year for them.


Sunday, we went to the National Museum of Wales. Here, we saw an evolution exhibit with an electronic mammoth that scared Molly good and some ancient sculptures from Dazu, China. My favorite part was their collection of Impressionist paintings. I got to see some of Monet's water lily paintings, Van Gogh's "Rain in Auver," and Renoir's "La Parisienne." It made me even more excited to see the National Art Gallery in London during spring break. We still had some free time before the bus left so we quickly walked back the Cardiff Castle to get some pictures of the Animal Wall (above), another creation of William Burges. It is a wall along the castle with 15 sculptures of different animals. It had cats, a seal, a bird, bear, monkey, all sorts of animals. We loaded the bus up in the early afternoon and spent the next five hours getting back to Bangor.