"Swansea Sandwich with London Bread" Weekend

Just to forewarn, this post is massively long. For the abridged version, read the bold print.

This was a weekend of adventure! After class on Thursday, I hopped on a train to London to meet my friend, Sarah, who is from SEMO but is studying in Spain this semester. She and I checked out King's Cross. I wanted to see Platform 9 ¾, which the King's Cross people have apparently moved from between platforms 9 and 10 to a little cubby hole outside the station. It's okay; the Harry Potter nerd inside of me was beaming anyway. Then, we went to Camden Market. It was cool. . . and a little overwhelming. We took a break in Costa, a coffee shop, so that I could introduce Sarah to their wonderful hot chocolate with their even more wonderful marshmallows. By that point, it was time to head off to Swansea, Wales.

We traveled by Megabus, so, after 5 hours of busing, we were ready for bed. Luckily, the guest house we had booked ahead of time was lovely. We had tried to get a hostel for a bit of a cheaper rate, but there was none to be found in Swansea. When we got to the guest house, we found out that the blinds in our room were broken, so the lady in charge put us in a bigger room with a view of the beach for the night. We weren't complaining!

The next morning, we took a walk through Swansea's main market. It was great! They had lots of cool things to see, and, more importantly, lots of fun, inexpensive food. We tried corned beef/potato/onion pasties and Welsh cakes. The Welsh cakes ended up being our favorite, and we ate them for the next two days. Next, we took a walk around the town. We saw the ruins of Swansea Castle. There isn't much left of it, but it's neat anyway. We also looked inside a very nice church called St. Mary's. Ladies at St. Mary's were serving “Squash,” a type of juice that's popular here, so Sarah got her first taste of that as well. After poking around Swansea for a while, we took a bus to the nearby village of Mumbles. Here we saw Oystermouth Castle. It is also in ruins, but there is a lot more left of it. The castle isn't currently open, because they're doing major safety renovations. However, one of the workers let us go inside the entry way (already safe apparently) which we were pretty excited about. We walked some short trails just outside the castle after that and found an awesome tree swing that we took full advantage of. Then, we headed into town and took a look in some of the shops. After some excellent advice from a lady at the tourist information center, we headed toward Langland Bay to do Mumble's big nature walk. We got to see a beautiful beach, awesome rock formations, and lovely hills. We even climbed to the tops of the hills. We finished up the walk with a quick look at the Mumbles Head Lighthouse, and, then, we caught a bus back to Swansea. After all that wonderful Welsh experience, we unwound with a yummy Domino's pizza in our room. This was our second room. The blind was fixed, so we moved into the room we had originally booked. With a view of the city, we still weren't complaining.

Saturday, we had a full English breakfast in town. Bacon, egg, hash browns, sausage, tomato, beans, and hot chocolate. Needless to say, it was delicious. On our way to the bus station we caught a minute or two of the Wales vs. France Rugby Wold Cup game on TV in the shopping center. We just happened to be in town during the big game! That day, the bus took us to Rhossili Bay, Gower. We wasted no time taking the first hiking path we saw up a huge hill. From the top of the hill, we could see all of Rhossili. I think that spot is the most beautiful place I've ever been. We could see the sandy beach down in front of us, the peninsula of Rhossili to our left, hills to our right, and farms and houses behind us. We decided this was a perfect spot for more Welsh treats. (We had stopped at the market again that morning.) This time, we tried jam splits, something with a raspberry and apple spread, and an almond macaroon. The apple and raspberry thing was my favorite. After our picnic, we took a walk on the beach and did some exploring around the bases of the cliffs. We then headed to our second destination for the day, Park Mill, Gower. One of our favorite parts of the outings that day was the bus trip between Rhossili and Park Mill. Our bus driver was a hoot, and two ladies he knew got on the bus after a few stops and had us rolling with laughter the rest of the way. We probably could have hung out on that bus all day, but we pressed on. We went to Park Mill, because we heard they were having a Cider Festival and thought it was worth a side trip. It was a neat little festival in the town's heritage centre. They had live music, jam tasting, cider, and all of the heritage centre's regular exhibits. Sarah and I tried some cider, but we weren't going back for seconds. I just turned 21 in September and haven't tried very many drinks, but I now know that I prefer non-alcoholic cider. . . or maybe it's just that no cider will ever top the Roth family Christmas apple cider. :-) When we had checked out the festival we walked to the nearby Three Cliffs Bay, which, as you may imagine, has three cliffs right next to one another on the beach. This was also beautiful, but the best part was climbing another hill to look at the ruins of Pennard Castle. It's such a cool area, and, again, we could see for miles. We had a good laugh when we got to the top of the hill and found a golf course opposite the castle. It would be beautiful to golf up there, but it's a heck of a lot of work to haul all of your stuff up. After our castle adventure, we headed back to Swansea to go to bed early.

The next morning, we woke up WAY early to catch the Megabus to London at 4:30am. Don't worry; we didn't actually lose much sleep. Once we got on the bus, we slept until 9:15am when we arrived in London. Once in London, we hurried to get over to St. Paul's Cathedral for the 10:15 Mattins and Address service. The cathedral is absolutely breathtaking. I've never seen anything like it. As the organ played and the male choir (ranging in age from about 7 through adults) sang, I thought to myself, “Hey, wouldn't this be a great place for the Installation Service for the new bishop of the Central/Southern Illinois Synod?” (My dad was installed as bishop on Saturday in Springfield). I thought it was a good idea, but I'm told that the service in Illinois was beautiful too. After the service, Sarah and I walked by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on our way to an event in the same area called “Chocolate Unwrapped.” I guess this weekend was the end of Chocolate Week in London, and I was all for celebrating it. We tasted lots of chocolates and saw chocolate shoes and sculptures. We even tried chocolate fondu with rose petals as the food you dip in the chocolate. That was a little strange. After the chocolate event, we went exploring around the area. We wound up at Tower Bridge and then at the London Bridge. We crossed the London Bridge and started on the Thames River walking path, and we walked alongside the river all the way until we got to Westminster. It was a relaxing walk and a perfect way to end our weekend. At that point, I had to get going to catch my bus back to Coventry.

Whew! If you made it this far in the post, I congratulate you. I hope I didn't bore you too much with the EXTRA long post.

Laura

Entering the beach of Langland Bay in Mumbles

More of Mumbles

Rhossili-- This picture doesn't nearly to it justice.

My favorite Welsh treat-- something with raspberry and apple filling

Jam tasting at the Cider Festival at Park Mill

Pennard Castle ruins

View of Three Cliffs Bay from Pennard Castle; the three cliffs are just beyond the hill on the left.