Wales: Beach Day

Wales has an amazing coastline! We couldn't have come to Wales and skipped the opportunity to go to the beach. So on our second day in the area, we drove for about an hour to the town of Tenby. It was chilly but at least not rainy. We, first, grabbed some lunch at the Bali Hai cafe--simple toasties and ice cream for kids. 

Afterwards, we walked down to the beach right there in town. 

Robert is keen on taking panoramic shots wherever we go--I guess this is proof that they do present us with a better idea later of what the scenery looks like. 

Look at all that nice sandy beach. The weather was in the 60s still, so it's empty. This destination is a hot spot, though, for those who love vacationing in the UK in August.

And the kids started digging...

And digging...

And trying to "not get wet"...

"Hey, Alex, what's your favorite part of hanging out on the beach at Tenby?"

"Well...um...ACTUALLY (one of Alex's favorite words), these gross jellyfish are kind of exciting...although they are dead...but they are still cool, and huge".

Hi, Mark! Still waiting for the front teeth to start growing.

We spent awhile on this beach. 

The sun was coming out slowly and we decided we should drive over to another beach near Tenby in a more rural setting. We did walk over to Castle Beach as well, that was on the other side of town, but it was very crowded.

This beach is called Freshwater East Beach. It was beautiful, vast and sandy. 

And a perfect place to take a nap, although I am pretty sure he is faking it.

Katya was experimenting with her new sandy bearded look. 

In fact, she was pretending to be Conchita Wurst (google it, you might get nightmares, though).

And Robert came up with the new way of taking action shots--instead of jumping, we asked the kids to fall down. Yeah, we, as PARENTS, asked our kids to fall down. 

It was a ton of fun to watch them.

Mark got buried AGAIN. It's like his thing--to get buried in the sand on the beach and order squid at restaurants if there is any seafood available.

It was not so easy to pull him out. Reminded me of the Ukrainian fairy tale about "Ripka" (you can google that too).

Robert is so great at playing with the kids on the beach!

And these guys are still falling down...

It was Alex's turn to get buried. It took a lot longer to bury him than Mark.

Something washed up on shore...???

Mark tried to get into that freezing water--he really did--despite having no swimsuit to change into.

But after a few attempts he kept jumping out of water with a funny face like this--the water was just too cold to enjoy it:).

That evening we drove to the house at which we were staying and cooked a simple pasta dinner--so convenient to have a kitchen when you vacation.

It was a great day at the beach, and the weather turned out to be better than was forecasted, so we were very happy:).

Lyana.

Wales: Hiking In The Waterfall Country

As we try to use all three and four day weekends to travel, this Memorial Day weekend, we packed up our car bright and early and headed to Wales. This was our third trip to Wales as we love that area so much, although every time we go to a different part of Wales. This time we drove 3.5 hours to Brecon Beacons National Park. The drive is super easy with beautiful views once you cross from England to Wales. In order for us to save money on lodging (which is always so expensive in the UK), we opted for an early morning departure, getting to Wales around 11 am and then hiking the rest of the day rather then driving down here on Friday night and staying the night in Wales.

We drove to Penderyn area, found an obscure unmarked place to park our van and started our Four Waterfalls Hike.

The projected distance was about 5.5 miles. No biggie. And only a few rolling hills on the way, nothing like Snowdon.

Waterfall #1. Not the little one in the background, but the one that you cannot see. And the worst part I don't have pictures of this actual waterfall:)

The boys were attracted like magnets to any creak and rocks.

And Katya was attracted to trees because that's what she does best-climb trees. 

Following the trail was pretty easy except when we took a trail that was sort of closed (but we didn't know that).

This is the "closed path".

Finally, waterfall #2. This was a cooler one.

Nevertheless, if you were to ask our kids what their favorite part was at this waterfall, they'd say this puddle with tadpoles.

Robert, the mountain man.

We were heading to the next waterfall and we were not exactly sure again where we were going. 

One of the passages was quite rocky and steep. We didn't want to go back down the same way, so we had to be creative (we ended up just following the trail hoping it would be a loop, and it was).

At this point we had already seen Waterfall #3 and did not take a picture. Seriously, what kind of blog post is this?

But we did see beautiful bluebells.

Finally, we knew we were on the right track as we saw signs for Sgwd yr Eira, the famous Waterfall #4. 

Mark in the "forbidden forest", like in Harry Potter.

And this is why this Waterfall #4 is so special--you can walk behind it!

The water was thundering, and you do get wet from the droplets and mist. The kids loved it. 

And this is what the world looks like from behind the water curtain.

A classic family picture.

I forgot to mention, to get to the waterfall, you have to walk a hundred or so steps (and walk them up after you are done).

This trio is ready for the final hike back to the car.

So after all, our hike turned out into a 7.5 mile hike somehow. We were slow, but we enjoyed it tremendously. Mark only was, um, a bit whiny tired during the last twenty minutes, but we managed. 

We were happy and exhausted to get to our car and drove another hour to the place in Brefta, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, where we were staying. This house was our home for two nights-three bedrooms, kitchen, living room even a laundry room. It had all the necessities and things that were "just nice to have" like beautiful soaps and towels. 

The village pub was famous all around for its food, so we were lucky that the manager was able to squeeze us in for dinner without a reservation considering it was a Bank Holiday weekend. We had a very delicious meal of typical Welsh food, prepared fresh using produce and meat from across the road.

The highlight of the evening was our annual tradition of watching Eurovision together. We let the kids stay up late as we see European nations battle in this song contest. We laugh, we sing, we squeal and it's just fun. This year's winner was Swedish Mans Zelmerlow with the song "Heroes". We all loved it, actually, and were rooting for him. Here, you can listen to this catchy tune as well. It's been over a month since our trip and the kids still sing this song at least once a day.

And that was our first full day in Wales.

Lyana.

War Horse

Our older children have been into reading books about World War I (the Great War as they call it here) and the World War II lately. Katya has read every book available in her school library telling stories of people during the Second World War. And Alex has nominated himself to be ab expert on this subject matter with his knowledge of all sorts of non-fiction facts. He also has been reading every book by Michael Marpungo (a famous English authors who is still alive) that he could find. Not all books were about war, but one of his favorites was War Horse. 

If you have seen the famous movie "War Horse", you know it's a very sad and at the same time happy story about a boy and his horse during the Great War. Alex has never seen the movie, as it's rated PG-13. But we decided that it would be all right to take him to London to see War Horse in theater on West End. 

We made it extra special by leaving our two other kids at home with friends:)

We had great seats and the play was amazing! The horses were actually life-size puppets--you can see it on the poster. It took three people for each puppet to move around. After a while--I am not exaggerating--you forget that those creatures are puppets, that's how realistic their movements and even noises are. 

Alex was really impressed by the show. It helped that he knew the synopsis well so he could focus on the emotional part of it. It was very intense at times, but he was ready for it. 

I just love that we get to live so close to the place where we can expose our kids to various angles of art and I am grateful that our kids enjoy these great outings.

Lyana.