While Robert Is Running: Penrhyn Castle, Wales

We had a few hours to spare while Robert was running his marathon. It's interesting that although I wasn't running the race, my thoughts were constantly turning to Robert and how he was doing while we were wondering around this place. We left Llanberis as soon as the guys started their race with the rain pouring down... I wasn't sure what to expect at all, how would they ever SURVIVE that race in the cold and wet weather. But that story of survival is not mine to tell-haha. Happy Robert already wrote a blog post about that.

So back to me and the kids. We drove north to Bangor for about 20 minutes to reach this castle with the name that I keep misspelling when I write about it or search for it:))

This castle is quite modern by English standards. It was built in the 1820s-1830s for George Hay Dawkins Pennant, a prominent member of parliament at that time, by a famous architect Thomas Hopper (honestly, this was the first time I heard of him, but he is famous). 

What's cool about this castle is that unlike a lot of castles built even at that time, Thomas Hopper built this one in a neo-norman style. Most others followed the fashion of Gothic architecture. 

Just a few years after the castle was finished, George H.D. Pennant died and his daughter inherited the castle, and the guy she married became the 1st Lord Penrhyn of Llandegai.

This 1st Lord Penrhyn was very good at collecting fabulous paintings from Venice, Holland and Spain. Throughout the castle you can seen elaborate decorations and art on display.

But we were more interested in the outside once the rain stopped.

Look at that sea in the distance! It was a beautiful sight. 

As we were visiting the castle right before Halloween, kids could participate in a few craft workshops. They made "bats" on strings, so Mark played with those quite a bit. 

Katya had my phone and was experimenting with different filters. I thought she did well. 

We had lunch at the tea room at the castle (which we never do) and it was delicious! I had a traditional Welsh "melted cheese" sandwich that kind of tasted like beer, but that's what made it so good and Welsh:). Mark had a shepherd's pie that had something very traditional (weird) in it, Alex had some sausages, and Katya had soup. 

It was almost 2pm when we checked on Robert's time and saw that he was "supposed" to be finishing the race at 2:30 pm or so. We rushed back to Llanberis and after driving for ten minutes looking for a parking spot, going through the windiest Welsh streets in town, I scored a brilliant parking spot for FREE (right next to the finish line). This is an important detail because... this very morning after dropping Robert off I came back to our van and saw a "council" lady putting a PARKING TICKET under my windshield wiper. Yeah....70 GBP... It's a story for another time though...so I won't bore you with details how I was chasing policemen just to get to the truth about why I got the parking ticket:)) and then them telling me that it's not them who care about parking, it's the city council (although the lady told me clearly to go find a policeman because they are the ones that tell the council to check these parked cars. HA! She thought I'd never follow up on that, but she clearly underestimated me). The moral of the story is--don't park on the road that although might look like a small local road (because it's Wales) but is indeed a two lane highway. Also don't pay attention that dozens of other drivers parked along that road as well. See? I didn't really tell you the story:))

Getting tired now... and I have to wake up early tomorrow to go running. 

Lyana.