Conwy Castle

Lastnight, Dave & I went for some food & drinks - that ended up being a few too many wines for me. I hardly ever drink, so when I do, I kinda forget my tolerance levels.. & end up with a horrible hangover in the morning. This morning was the first major hangover I have had this year & will be the last. In the last bar we went to lastnight, the lady behind the bar gave us all a shot (some blue/red or green liquid) to celebrate a girl's 18th. I was fine, until after that shot. A few moments after, I just felt really ill & ended up being sick in the ladies toilet (classy I know) I came out & just told Dave I wanted to go home, then went straight to bed.

Then it was morning... urgh. I must have slept funny & my neck was killing me (it still hurts a little now). I also had a killer headache & couldn't even get out of bed/stand up straight. It was really annoying because it was such a nice morning outside (after a dull bank holiday weekend). In the end, I managed to drag myself downstairs, make a cup of tea, take some paractamol & eat some toast. Not as easy as it sounds, lol. We decided to go out somewhere & that somewhere was Conwy (again) but this time to the main town & its Castle! Here are some photos - which aren't the best, because they're from my phone (because I have no idea where my camera is, which is reallllly starting to annoy me).

Above: You can see the city wall that we walked around :)

Dave insisted we climbed up 6 towers, it was worth it though for the views from the top. We were at least a 100ft up at some points. The narrow spiralling staircases were pretty scary to walk up, especially with lots of foreign tourists everywhere. Dave made me laugh today, he said you can spot the American tourists, because of the bum bags/oversized cameras & they are always hugely fascinated by the castles... seriously though, why the bum bags, lol.

Above: One of the views from the top - sometimes you don't realise how beautiful some places on your doorstep really are.

After the castle, we went for a walk along the promanade, we have lived in North Wales all our lives & didn't even know there was a promenade, lol.

Then when we walked back towards the harbour, we stumbled across the smallest house in Britain, which is in the Guiness Book of Records apparantly & yeah, it was pretty tiny.

We had some fish & chips from a chippy before going home. Overall, I'm glad I didn't stay in all day like I thought I was going to, the way I was feeling this morning, lol.

I do have a few other things to blog about, like Birthday plans (since it's my birthday on Thursday)! I've also got some news about my accommodation when I move to Manchester. So I'll save those entries for tomorrow, since Dave is telling me it's time for bed... I'm not going to argue with that.

Last Weekend - Part 2

On the Sunday last weekend, we decided to head out for a long drive. Nothing beats driving with the top down on a warm sunny day! We ended up going to Conwy Water Gardens, where they sell Reptiles, fish & have a few ponds & animals etc... here are the photos from there:

These were just some display waterfalls, which I think were really pretty. We're thinking of getting one for our garden (in the rockery).

This lizard kept nodding his head really fast, lol. I think he was going insane in there...

Above & below, a young Redwood Tree, largest kind of tree in the world. I say young, but when we got up close to it's trunk, it was huge.

Haha, I had NO idea what the hell these things were - & I usually can name every kind of animal/breeds out there....  They were Capybaras, the largest living rodents in the world & they were cute! I'd heard of the Chupacabra before, but never these things.

To finish off we went here, The Dutch Pancake House, where I had a sweet Hawaiian pancake (pineapple, coconut & banana with Ice cream) & Dave had a savoury Indian pancake (chicken, onions, peppers). I think the next stop if we go to Conwy again will be Bodnant Gardens...

Last Weekend - Part 1

So on Dave's first weekend off last week we decided to purchase a 'Red Rover' bus ticket. A return ticket from our house to the next big town Bangor, is £4.50 - which is ridiculous, since it's only a 10 mile journey. The Red Rover ticket costs £5.20 & allows you to travel anywhere around North Wales for 24 hours.

I'm not a big fan of the bus, at all, but since it was Dave's first weekend off work, it was up to him where we went & what we did. As you can probably tell from these pictures below, we had a really nice day :)

All of these pictures above where taken in Caernarfon - home of one of the most famous Castles in Wales/Uk. We went for some chinese food at Fu's (in one of the photos above) - which was also really good.

Dave's New Job

begins tomorrow!

My laptop has been playing up since last time I blogged, hence my absence from here. I didn't fancy blogging from my phone either - I can just picture myself writing a whole entry then accidently deleting it or something!

So yeah, Dave begind his new job tomorrow :) He's going to be working as a web developer for a guy who owns quite a few businesses on the island. He wants Dave to design him some websites, completely overhaul them (set up online shops etc). He'll still be running his own business too (BespokeBioinformatics) but while I'm at Manchester for the next year, it makes sense for Dave to hang around here - staying at our house with Tats & learning more in his new job about web designing for his future plans.

My move to Manchester isn't far now... I've applied for my room at Matthias Court & I'm just waiting for a response from their side. I have to say I am super excited, but at the same time I don't want to leave my two boys.. Saying that, Dave IS going to be visiting almost every other weekend he can & we've made a promise to make time at the weekends or any time off we have to DO something. Most student accommodation has rules stating that if you have a guest, they need to sign in & out & can only stay over twice a month.. but at Matthias, Dave can stay over two nights a week (Friday & Saturdays) - perfect :)

Apart from the above not much has happened since I last blogged. We went for an Indian meal with Dave's parents & brother on Friday night then on Saturday we decided to go see Toy Story 3D, which was awesome! Today, Dave decided he wanted to have a big sort out of the house (cleaning & organising, before I go away) & we ended up only cleaning two rooms, the kitchen & utility room, lol. Dave insisted on being 'thorough' & we ended up pulling EVERY appliance out & scrubbing every inch behind it. I am never, ever cleaning the house with him again!

Salford & Yorkshire

I'm back again!

So last week, on Wednesday, we took the trip down to Salford University for my interview. To cut a long story I had a long chat with a woman called Beth who teaches on the course & she was pretty impressed with what I'd done & what I had to offer. She told me at the end that she'd be seeing me again in September & I had a letter today congratulating me on getting on the course! The trip down was great... our Sat Nav was telling us to go the wrong way though (a long way round) so we ended up switching it off & using an 'old fashioned map' (on my new HTC phone, lol - which arrived that morning).
After the meeting, we went for a quick drive around the area. There wasn't a whole lot to see where the media building/the place I'll be staying is - it's a quieter area, which I suppose is a good thing, right? Manchester city centre isn't far at all though... We went to that carvery place for dinner, which was nice and then we headed off to Ikea! We ended up getting a lot more than my lamp, lol.

The next day, we had an early start again - we had to up at 6.30am to get ready for our train at 8am. I was so tired before we even got there. We got to Leeds & killed a few hours there while we waited for Gav & Sean to finish work. The first night, we just stayed out in Leeds before getting the train back to their house in Silsden (about half an hour away). Leeds itself was nice, but I didn't like it as much as I love Manchester  Liverpool. It didn't seem to have a 'centre' like Manchester/Liverpool do - it was great for shopping though!

On Friday, Gav & Sean had taken the day off so we went to a town called Skipton, which was a very 'oldy-worldy' market town, the kind of place I love. We spent all day there & enjoyed some really nice food (& drink) before heading home. The next day, Saturday - we spent in York. What a beautiful place. I fell in love with it completely. I think it's one of the few places I'd comsider moving to in the UK for sure. It wasn't only picturesque, but I loved the whole 'oldy-worldlyness' of it. There was a bustling market when we visited with lots of local produce as well as other things I could have easily spent all my money on. The shops/pubs there were great too - lots of old fashioned sweet shops & Deli's & the pubs were very old too. We ate our lunch underground (inside the Lord Mayor's old wine cellar) that dated back to the 13th century.

On the last day, we took a long walk along the Canal from Silsden to Kildwick - to a pub called The White Lion where we had one of THE best Sunday dinners, with authentic Yorkshire Puddings!! Dave & I then said goodby to Gav & Sean then spent the rest of our day in Leeds until we had to go home. We caught the 9pm train that got us home past midnight. Monday & today I have spent trying to rest my feet, we must have walked around 15 miles overall (Gav & Sean have no car - so it was a half hour walk to the station every day) - I wasn't a fan of that. Anyway here are some photos of our trip!

Above: Leeds, I didn't take many photos because we were always walking, plus we didn't have the best weather while we were there - it was constantly drizzling. The next bunch of photos are from York...

The above photo on the left, is the oldest (medieval) street in York, called Shambles St - because it looks all shambled together. The black & white building below was a Tudor building = very old. I guess you can tell by the way it's bending in the photo!

The last few pictures are from the last day - the canal walk... Yorkshire is just beautiful.

Above: A Heron.