Wales and Snowdon Mountain

We had a 4 day weekend for Easter so on Friday morning we met up with our friends Tom and Christina and drove about 4.5 hours to North Wales to a small village called Llanberis (pronounced Clanbearis in Welsch) . We stayed on a working sheep farm and since it is spring there were plenty of lambs to watch.

Looking at the lambs

We decided to go see one of Wales' many many castles on Friday afternoon. We went to the walled city of Caenarfon which had an impressive castle. We spent the afternoon looking at the castle museum, climbing long windy staircases up to castle turrets, and walking around the town.

Caenarfon castle, from one of the turrets

"The Eagle Tower" of Caenarfon castle

We had dinner at The Black Boy Diner, the oldest building in the town dating back to the 1500s. We turned in pretty early on Friday night to get a good rest for our hike on Saturday.

The Black Boy Inn - hardly PC...

View of Snowdon covered in clouds from our B&B

Saturday we had a hearty farm breakfast at the B&B and drove a short way to the trailhead. It was an intense hike, being very steep from the beginning through to the summit. It was 5 miles up to the top and then we came back down the same trail. We were rewarded for our exertion throughout the entire hike by amazing views of the surrounding hills and mountains and Conwy bay. And we even had sunshine! We had a quick lunch at the top and headed back down the trail. We had time for a drink and an ice cream in the sun when we finished the hike and then Ryan and I started on the drive home.

Gorgeous views down the mountain

More Wales scenery

During the day Saturday we had some houseguests come so we got to see them when we got home on Saturday night. They were in Cambridge for the Easter Service and Kings College Chapel. Ryan and I taught Sunday school in the morning and then herded children during an Easter egg hunt. In the afternoon we met up with our guests Trisha and Travis and did a walking tour of Cambridge. We actually learned a lot about the town we've been living in for over a year. And we went inside many of the colleges that we hadn't seen yet so overall we really enjoyed the afternoon, though it was a somewhat strange Easter.
Monday we had off so we caught up on housework and let our muscles recover from the hike.