Wales!!

This past week was really exciting, we did a lot and had a lot of fun!

Monday, basic classes, nothing too exciting. For FHE (family home evening) our group went to Hyde Park with another group and played soccer.


Tuesday was an insane day full of classes. We combined Thursday classes with Tuesday so that we could leave for our extended weekend on Thursday. Though in the evening we went to Hyde Park once again and played soccer and ultimate Frisbee. So much fun!

Wednesday we went to Cambridge. We wandered around a Darwin exhibit at a museum for a while which was cool, then went to the botanical gardens. After that we wandered around a lot. Sadly, most of the buildings were closed so we didn’t get to go in. Not the most fun trip, a little on the boring side. Though we did watch a punter fall into the river he was giving tours of, haha. That was probably the highlight.

Thursday morning I spent doing homework. In the afternoon I quickly packed my backpack with the bare essentials and we left London for Cardiff, Wales.

When we got there we toured around Cardiff Castle first.

Then found the hostel the girls were staying in. After we’d dropped stuff off we went to dinner, then split off. Six of us started walking toward Cardiff Bay and the other three went to find BJ’s hostel, then would join us at the bay.

Well, it took us about two hours to make the forty-five minute walk. The road we needed to go down (once we found it) wasn’t open to pedestrians. We eventually found the bay a bit after 10pm and figured that the others had probably come and gone already. We looked around for a bit, then just as we were getting ready to head back to our hostel I spotted the other three turning a corner in our direction. Woot! After we were all together again we started having a bit of fun.

The hostel wasn’t that great. I felt like I was sleeping on the springs of my mattress. The light in the communal bathroom was out (I showered by flashlight) and there were lots of gross middle aged men wandering around in nothing but their underwear. Let me tell you, coming out of the bathroom and running into one of those guys isn’t pleasant…

In the morning we all headed down to the Cardiff Central train station and caught our train to Manorbier. That was where we would be staying the next night. When we got there it was literally in the middle of nowhere. We were totally out in the country, and Manorbier didn’t have much other than the train station and a school. We hiked two miles to our hostel there, which happened to be right on some cliffs overlooking the ocean. Beautiful! That hostel was much nicer than the other, but it was out in the middle of nowhere. We decided to catch the bus into Tenby, five miles away, and much more of a tourist town. We didn’t want to hike all the way up the long road so we cut through a farmer’s field.
We had fun in Tenby. The first stop was to a pub for food. After that we split off, into groups again and my group wanted to go to the aquarium there. As we passed one of the beaches we decided to take a short detour and played for a while.

Then we were back on the quest for the aquarium. Sadly, once we found it we saw that it closed at 5pm, not 6pm, but it was next to a cool, old cemetery so we wandered around that for a bit, then headed out again. By that time the continual mist that exists in Wales was starting to really get to us, especially BJ who had jumped into the ocean. We stopped in at another pub and got some hot chocolate before moving on and finding a cool old Norman castle that we checked out.When we finally decided to head back to the hostel (the cold was not fun) we realized that we missed the bus we needed and the next one was around 11:30pm. Needless to say we didn’t want to wait so we found a taxi big enough for the five of us and drove back to the hostel in Manorbier. It was nice being able to be driven right up to the door and not having to hike it.

We had to be at the Manorbier train station early in the morning to catch our train at 7:20am. No one really wanted to be conscious, and we had to hike through the fields again, which were wet, so when we made it we were all wet. My shoes were squishing with water, not cool.

The original idea was that we would take the train back to Cardiff and tour around Cardiff a bit more but we ended up getting off in Swansea for a while to chill. We ended up playing on the beach again. We caught a train back to Cardiff, did a bit of shopping, played some ultimate frisbee in a park next to Cardiff Castle, then caught the train back to London.
It was sooo nice to be back home! It was kind of weird to think that, as we finally pulled into Paddington station I thought, “ahh, back to London,” then when we finally turned onto Palace Court and walked into the BYU center it was like, “ahh, home.” First thing was first: a nice long, hot shower. Once I was comfortable again I could continue with my evening.

So yeah, that was my last week. Going to Wales was definitely the highlight. It’s such a beautiful country! The only down side was the constant rain/mist. It wasn’t really possible to feel dry. It’s nice to be back in London where we have dryers and enough going on in the center that it’s warm.

Well, until next time… Cheers!