Holiday Photos #12

While staying in Conwy, we took the bus to Caernarfon. In hindsight we wish we had dragged our luggage with us and stayed the night. We could have seen MacBeth played inside the castle walls that evening. Unfortunately we did not, so we only had time for a visit to the castle, a quick tea, and then back to the bus stop. But that's not to say it wasn't worth the trip. It was quite a grand castle. Or rather, the castle ruins.

Remember, you can click on the images if you want to see them in a larger format.

Original built by England's King Edward I, along with a string of other seaside castles, to make sure there were no lingering doubts that Wales was now ruled by England. Nowadays however, Welsh flags fly above the castle.

Here is William waiting for our tour guide. We didn't take many organized tours, preferring to ramble at our own pace and inclination, but this tour turned out to be time well spent. We learned a lot about how castles were built and what they looked like when they were in use and we were able to use that information to help us "see" a lot in the rest of the castles and historical buildings we visited after this. The second rise of grass in the background of this photo is where Prince Charles was crowned the current Prince of Wales.

This young woman sat on the steps the entire afternoon that we were there. She introduced herself as the wife of King Edward's architect, waiting patiently for her husband while he met with the king to go over plans for continued building on the site. She was amazingly able to stay in character and was a wealth of historical information in a most entertaining way.

Here is a sweeping view of the inside from end to end from atop the outer wall.

And another view from above, looking out over the harbor which circled round two sides of it. This is a looking.... northwest I believe, towards the Irish Sea.

At one point William and I were separated - we had a merry chase up and down different parts of the castle trying to meet back up. Here William is below on the grass (using a telephoto lens) and I am halfway up in a second story window.

For more holiday photos, visit Laumes Studio.