Every good and perfect gift is from above...James 1:17

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A 'Wale' Of A Time!

A 'Wale' of a Time!
Nov. 18-20, 2005
We decided to go Welsh for the weekend. It was about a 3-4 hour drive over to Wales. They are bilingual, speaking a mixture of Welsh and English. Even the road signs have 2 spellings. It's an odd little language, sounding like a mixture of German and Hebrew. Araf means slow (the 'f' sounds like a 'v') and bwyty means restaurant, just to name a few of those crazy Welsh words.
We ran into this little old couple at a pub. The lady was very eager to speak to Americans and tried giving us advice. The problem was she was hard to understand. It's one of those things where you say "Yes" and "Oh?" and hope they're in the right places. As we were walking out I was about to comment to Abe that I wasn't sure if it was the Welsh or the beer that made her hard to understand, but then her husband followed us out and held us captive in the cold outdoors for about 10 minutes in a one sided conversation. Once again, I don't know if it was an accent or too much beer, but you couldn't understand him any better than his drunk wife. We're hoping that won't be us in 40 years!
We saw 3 of the 4 castles built in 1283 by King Edward I. He was a busy man that year. They were in better shape than some of the ruins we've seen and you could wander around all the halls and up and down all the stairs. They are so large it's easy to get lost in them. We also saw the meeting site of the first parlimentary meeting with King Edward I, also going down in 1283.
On Sunday we were everywhere in Shropshire. We saw a couple of old bridges, one being the first iron bridge, a couple abbeys and priories, and the outside of a catholic 'safe house' and a Roman bathhouse. Those Romans sure were smart little boogers. They had a leisure center, frigid rooms, tempid rooms, hot rooms, cold rooms, and even an outdoor swimming pool. I felt like I was back at home. (That's me laying out by the pool.) Except it's about 8 degrees C in the sun.
We're back in the Castle again this week. It's close to Abe's work and I can pinch their wireless internet here. This is a sunset view from our room.

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