We took a breather from sight seeing this morning and left the bed and breakfast around 11:30.  We like where we are staying, but even though we had two fans and an open window, we are still overheating while we are sleeping! We got up early to eat breakfast in the allotted time and then came back to the room for a nap!  

We drove to Conwy Castle, which was our first time in Wales.  It’s so strange to be in one country that has four countries attached to it and three are on island. It’s like driving through states in the United States.  You just see a sign that says, Welcome to Wales and all the signs thereafter are both in English and Welch. We have encountered a lot of traffic here, which is not much different from the rest of the world, but it seems to happen at all times of the day.  Also, for those of you who have not driven a car in the UK, it takes getting used to being on the other side of the car and the other side of the road. I feel like my spatial awareness is messed up and I can’t figure out how much space there is on the passenger side.  The narrow country roads do not help. In any case, we have been driving as safely as possible.  Conwy is only a little over an hour from Chester.  There are several parking lots near the castle.  This time we used the online service to pay since we had no coins and the credit card did not function on the machine. 

We walked around the city’s outer walls and could have climbed to the top to walk along them, if we so wished.  There is 1,400 yards of unbroken ring of wall around the city. The entrance to the castle was next to a smaller parking lot.  It was about 11 pounds each to enter the castle.  You could buy a guide if you wished at about 5 pounds.  The castle was quite busy with a lot of children running around.  It was difficult to maneuver up and down the spiral staircases, but everyone was super polite about it, which was lovey. 

Conwy Castle is a medieval fortress that has been intact for over 700 years. It has the most intact set of medieval apartments in Wales. However, it is mostly open, except for several towers.  You can wander around pretty much where you wish.  I didn’t see anyone overseeing the area at all.  If you wanted, you could climb every tower that had a staircase (they did not all have working ones). Each room or area had a sign telling you where you were located like the Great Hall, or the Kitchen Tower, etc. We had a really fun time exploring.  There are about 72 steps to get to the top of a tower.  You can also walk around the walls on top as well.  It was neat. 

After we explored the castle, we wanted to get a picture of it from the same spot that we drove into the city.  We had to walk back out through the gift shop and around the city. We first walked to the suspension bridge and across that.  Then we crossed the road over near the ocean and walked back to the castle for amazing pictures.  

After Conwy, we traveled to Gwrych Castle, which was only about twenty minutes away.  When you drive the road to the castle, it seems like you are going the wrong way.  You go by a kids theme park, then through a country club golf course before arriving at the castle.  This castle was made more famous with a reality tv show that I have never watched called, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!.  They were very keen on pointing out the areas that were used for filming and they kept a bunch of stuff from the show.  I thought it kind of ruined the castle vibe for me, but it is only a few small areas and if it helps tourism, good for them.  

This castle was listed as a country house and was an attempt at replicating medieval architecture. There are over 250 acres with really amazing views of the sea.  It was built between 1812 and 1822. The land was owned by the family for almost 1000 years, but was sold in 1946 during World War II. It was purchased twice thereafter as a showplace, once for medieval demonstrations.  After 1990 the castle was stripped of its assets and vandalized so much that it was questionable if it could be saved. 

Gwrych Castle has a self tour that you can follow on your phone.  It also has a section about the reality show and where things were filmed, if you are interested.   There are also some placards in the few rooms that you can enter. The gardens were striking.  The variety of flowers and plants were impressive to me. There were not very many people at this castle, which was nice when exploring. 

There were a few rooms that you could go into at the castle. The countess’ drawing room was a tiny room off the gardens. There was a stairway that used to be marble that went down into the house (that had 23 bedrooms). The original chapel was also intact and was used for many different things through the years.

We stopped to take a picture of Rhuddlan Castle.  It was also very difficult to park to enter the site. We settled for a picture of it from afar. 

On the way back to Chester we stopped at a pub for dinner.  I finally got my first Guinness in England! It was a perfect dinner, nothing too fancy, but tasty. I will leave you with a few pictures of one of the two way roads we drove today.