Warwick and Wales Weekend

Although we had all kinds of fun and interesting things planned for this weekend, it ended up being a little boring. Apryll and I went on a trip with our school to Warwick Castle, which is supposed to be one of the best castles in England. As it turns out, it was too kid-oriented for us to really enjoy. The bus dropped us off at the castle and left us there for 7 hours until we could go back home. These hours passed painfully. There wasn't too much to see in the castle itself -- just some lavish state rooms, a dungeon and some cheesy movies playing. We ended up watching all three of the "shows" going on around the castle grounds: a birds of prey exhibition, an archery demonstration and a trebuchet firing. The trebuchet was the only good one because it launched a flaming ball of fire! Other than that, there was a garden where peacocks strutted around. We spent most of the day laying around in the field by the trebuchet because we were so bored.

Yesterday we took a bus to Wales, where we stayed the night in Cardiff. The bus ride itself was painful and so was our stay in Cardiff. Our hostel was great and we ate some amazing food, but we had a hard time finding things to do in town. We went to the National Museum, which featured an enormous display about Welsh rocks and some equally boring archaeology exhibits. There was an interesting photography exhibit as well as some Leonardo Da Vinci drawings. By the time we finished with the museum at 5 p.m., everything in Cardiff had shut down. We were so tired from the previous few days that we went back to the hostel and slept.

Today we headed down to the Cardiff Bay, which was supposed to have plenty of things to do. Aside from looking at the Millenium Center and the National Assembly, we still couldn't find anything going on. Even the Norwegian Church was closed. We walked back to town and spent the rest of the day shopping.