Saturday morning we were up and at 'em early thanks to the kiddos waking up and not allowing anyone within earshot to sleep. :) We took the train 30 minutes to the town of Caerphilly to see Caerphilly Castle, the second largest castle in Britain, if not in all of Europe, but I'm not so sure on my facts there... Anyway, it is was built in the 13th Century and has an amazing fortification system which includes an inner and outer moat each with an impenetrable wall and drawbridge system to keep invaders out.
The weather was absolutely perfect, which apparently was a birthday miracle for Welch weather in January! And the castle and surrounding countryside was spectacular! Most of the castle is ruined (Parliament had it destroyed to reduce the likelihood of their power being overthrown), but in the 1930's during the Great Depression, the Marquess of Bute (same one who owned Cardiff Castle - he was a super wealthy coal mine owner) paid local workers to re-do it as sort of a public service.
This is a model of the castle and surrounding moats and land. You can see how difficult it would have been to get across both lakes and over all the walls all the while having arrows and whatnot shot at you as you were trying to invade.
View of the Caerphilly village from the main tower
Medieval toilet
The partially destroyed tower in the left of this picture leans more than the leaning tower of Pisa!
We had an amazing morning wandering around the castle, but soon got hungry and had pasties from Glanmoor's (see pic below).
We had a short window to catch the train back to Cardiff, then a bus that comes once an hour to take us to St. Fagan's Living Museum of Welsh life. Sadly, there was something wrong with the train signals so they were really delayed and we missed our window of opportunity to St. Fagan's, but it sounded so neat that we decided to take a taxi out there. It was our first time in a taxi and it was really interesting! They're big enough that you just wheel your buggy right on and leave your child in it with the brake on. You can see the handle of the buggy in the pic below. We all fit nicely in the taxi and it didn't even cost us an arm or a leg!
St. Fagan's is a working museum with buildings from all over Wales that were going to be torn down that were instead taken carefully down and put back together here to show what life has been like in Wales through the years.
The pictures below are of the Cock Pit - a place where the villagers would gather to watch cock fights. Here are Grace, Ruby and Rob re-enacting what it must have looked like back in the day (sans chickens...)
I think it's hilarious. The girls didn't really get what to do, but it was funny watching them do what we told them to :)
These 4 cottages (above and below - back and front respectively) show life through time in Merthyr Tydfil. Each one skips 50 years so you can see life getting a little more comfortable until in the 1950's you have a large porcelain tub right in your kitchen. How's that for convenience?! No flash was allowed inside and it wasn't light enough to get decent pictures, so you'll have to imagine. On a side note, I have Welsh coal miner ancestors who lived in Merthyr Tydfil!
The four pictures below are from a church. It was so neat to see inside. The preacher stood up on the pulpit and the families each had their own pew with a door to close the kids in. Brilliant I say! Plus, the pew walls were high enough so only the preacher could see into each one, not your nosy neighbor.
The outside was nothing spectacular, but this was one of my favorite buildings we went in there
The girls on the church balcony
There was another part of St. Fagan's with a castle, but we couldn't see it from the entrance and were skeptical about a "castle" (such travel-worn attidues, no?!), so we didn't leave much time to see it before closing. We did hurry over in our last few minutes and were blown away by the gardens leading up to the house. They were beautiful! Probably the most beautiful gardens we've seen in Europe yet. I can't imagine what it'd be like in the Spring! The castle was originally owned by the family that owned the land St. Fagan's was on and it all was eventually donated to the museum, so the gardens and house weren't transplanted like everything else.
This picture just does not do it justice. The house is up on the hill on the right and the terraces were beautiful!
We headed back to Cardiff and had the best pizza I have ever tasted at Pizza Express, then found a chocolate cake and milk to take back to our hotel room for a birthday treat which we ate with the kids, then ate more of with a little Netflix after the kids had fallen asleep :)
It was a very happy birthday indeed!
Sunday morning we packed up and checked out, all ready to hike the 30 minutes to church. Except, Google Maps is in beta for walking directions, so we had to re-direct a couple of times, but we walked really fast (which is hard pushing a fully-loaded buggy with 3 kids on it (see above)! And in a pencil skirt.) (Thank you for that pat on the back). We made it to the address only 5 minutes late to find that there was no church there. Anywhere to be seen. Whomp, whomp. So we headed back to the hotel to change in their restrooms and headed out to Cardiff Bay to check it out. It wasn't until then that we realized that the weather Saturday had truly been a birthday miracle - it was so biting cold and windy that all we could even think about was getting inside. We saw the bay visitors center and watched a video about how lovely it is when it's warm, then found some lunch and headed for the train home.
Ruby didn't want to share the buggy board with Grace, and all of our adult hands were full, so Rob got creative :)
Our trains were late and delayed and cancelled so it took a bit longer to get home than we planned. (Plus a run up and down and up and down a flight of stairs with the suitcase and buggy because they changed platforms on us at the last second!) But when we got back to Richmond we headed over to the Petts for our usual Sunday night dinner and they surprised me with cake and a present. I just love them. Having such wonderful friends here with us has made this adventure even awesomer than it would have been otherwise! It was the best 30th birthday I ever could have imagined. I'm looking forward to a new decade of adventures!
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