Making Lemonade: A Wales of a Good Time!

This past week was free travel week (well, extended weekend of sorts). So, after classes and a midterm, Paige, Alissa, Jessica, and I made our way to Bristol and Wales! We had a Wale of a good time! (Pardon the pun, I couldn't help myself).

On Wednesday, we left after class and made our way on coach (bus) to Bristol. After we got there, we just explored the city and the university a bit. It was charming! I especially loved looking at the university buildings. They were so majestic. It was hard to imagine actually going to school in them. It was also not quite what I expected. I'm used to the younger universities that are all based in one area. The University of Bristol is spread throughout a lot of the city in random buildings. But, it was way cool.

The music building at the University of Bristol.

Thursday, we went to Wales!!! (as you can tell, I was pretty excited) I swear, we had the magic touch when it came to transportation. We kept hitting each connection perfectly. I felt super lucky! But, besides transportation joy.... anyways.... we made our way up to Tintern Abbey! I had studied Wordsworth's poem that he wrote while reflecting on his visit there, so I was extremely excited. The Abbey did not disappoint. It was majestic and almost haunting. It was visually appealing and I loved taking pictures of all of the different angles and views that I saw. We totally had an English geek-out moment as we sat under a tree, looking at the Abbey, and read Wordsworth's poem. It was pretty great!

Then, we had a different type of geek-out moment. Tintern Abbey is right by the forest of Dean. For all the Harry Potter fans out there, you know what that means. It's the forest where Harry, Ron, and Hermione were camped out in when they were searching for Horcruxes and later got captured in. So, we went into the forest and pretended we were wizards. It was a lot of fun.

After that, we went to Chepstow, Wales to explore Chepstow Castle. When I first approached the castle, I was a little underwhelmed, but that feeling quickly changed. The castle was surprisingly huge! We got to climb up turrets, go across battlements, and see beautiful views across the river Wye. The castle is perched on a cliff that overlooks the river and it was breathtaking. It ended up being my favorite part of the trip.

Chepstow Castle!

The oldest castle doors in Europe!

I also had no idea how close Chepstow was to England. We had gone down to a bridge so we could get a better view of the castle over the river and discovered something surprising: after we had finished crossing the river, we were in England! Who knew? Certainly not me! So, I got to be in England and Wales at the same time, which was pretty exciting.

In England and Wales at once!

On Friday, we explored Bristol a bit. We went on and across the Clifton Suspension Bridge, this really cool bridge that goes across the Avon River Gorge. It was a bit freaky to walk across it, but really cool at the same time. We also went to the Bristol Museum. They had an exposition of da Vinci's drawings, which were spectacular, mummies, cool rocks and fossils, and more! It was a really good museum. We also saw Bristol Cathedral, walked along the river, and just generally explored the town.