April 2nd

March 31st

We head out at 8:30 this morning for Wales. After Cynthia had talked to us for a while I took a nice little nap. We stopped at what essentially their version of a rest stop, but a whole lot bigger. It has the grassy areas and facilities, but it also had a few restaurants and a bookstore for you to peruse. It was quite nice actually. After that we had another couple of hours to go and I did homework the entire way. We stopped at a place outside of Cardiff that was supposed to be a big outdoor museum to the Welsh lifestyle. The first thing we saw was a really modern house that was supposed to be almost completely green. I had a hard time finding the connection there to be honest. Out back they also had a stone slab that was cover in algae and sealed in a big vessel filled with water. That was going to stay closed for 50 years and when they opened it they were going to see what had happened. From there we moved on to an old fortified chateau that had some nice gardens around it. I found a little hidden one that was kind of neat. We didn’t really want to walk all the way back to the bus and there was a little tractor going around that would its way about area so you could see it. We hopped on that for a while and took a ride.

Once we everyone got back to the bus, we made the last leg of out trip to Cardiff. It was actually only about twenty minutes before we got out to go to out hostels. The place I was staying in was pretty nice, but we had some overflow to another hostel that was of a slightly lower quality. Once we got all settled, we headed out to find some food. The people at the hostel recommended a place that had a bunch of different restaurants in it, so we headed there. We ended up eating at a Mexican place and I had duck fajitas. They were pretty good. The food there was good, but the service was pretty bad. It took forever to get our food, we didn’t get everything we ordered and overall it was just very sub par.

We finished up out food there and went to the castle in the town square to go take a tour. Just as we were getting across the street, it just starting pouring out. It was like buckets of water had been dumped on our heads. Luckily, we were able to find refuge in the gift shop front and by the time the tour started, the rain had stopped. The tour of the castle was pretty much what I had expected. It was a ridiculously ornate place built by someone with too much money. There was an old castle on the site that was pretty cool to wander and climb on though.

Once we were done there, I went exploring with a couple other people from the group. We set out to find the bay this city was so famous for. We ended up finding a wharf that was pretty cool. There was also a huge bar/pub in the middle of this residential district that we went and checked out. It was a really nice place and we ended up sitting there for about two hours and getting something to eat. After a bit we went and tried to find some people to meet up with, but it was really far away and on the way we met some other people from our group and followed them to a pub. That place was just loud and over crowded and I headed out of there pretty quickly. We wandered around to another club that was also really crowded and ended up heading back to the pub on the wharf. They had a live band on stage that was pretty good and we had a blast. We started heading back and on the way stopped at another pub along the way. We had one more pint there and got back and called it a night.

April 1st

I got up this morning and headed down to breakfast. I spent a good amount of time catching up with people from the night before and then we headed out to the mine. We started heading to the other hostel to pick up a latecomer. We got about 15 minutes away from the hostel when we realized that we had left someone behind. We turned around as quick as we could and went to pick him up. Personally, I think it took him pretty good. After we were sure that we had everyone, we went off. We were within about half an hour of the mine so that wasn’t a big deal at all.

The mine itself was pretty cool. We had to leave anything that had a dry cell battery on the surface because that could cause a spark ho enough to ignite the methane gas down there and kill everyone in the mine. So that would have been bad. We got all kitted out with a light, battery, and survival gear. We headed down and took a tour of a bunch of the old mine shafts and some of the mining equipment. It was pretty cool. The tour guide was absolutely amazing. He was an old miner who had worked in the mines for 26 years before the mine was closed down. He was a really funny guy. We got done with the tour and headed above ground. The first place we went was a mineshaft that was accessible from the surface, but they were having power problems so we had to move on. I went up to the tip of the mine complex and took a look at the old shower facilities that had been turned into a museum. That was pretty cool. There was some interesting history there. I headed down to the bus and the group took a big group photo of everyone. Unfortunately, my hair was not cooperating.

We got on the bus and I did homework the rest of the trip. We did stop at another rest stop on the way back and had some lunch, but other than that I plowed through some reading. When we got back I was going to do some homework, but the weather got in the way. It was absolutely gorgeous out. A bunch of people were getting a soccer game together and after I got some emails out, I headed out to join them. We played out in the park for the better part of two hours and it was just a blast. It felt really good. When we got done, I came back and made some food before getting myself all cleaned up. I headed to Metrogate to get a paper typed up and spent about three hours there doing that. While I was there Dad called and we talked for a while. That was really nice. Once, I was done with that I called it a night.