From Bath, we took the M4 motorway across the Severn River Bridge (at 2 miles, a little bigger than the one with the same name in Annapolis!) to get to Wales.
We stayed outside the city of Newport at the Celtic Manor Resort & Golf Club. For you golf fans, this will be the location of the 2010 Ryder Cup golf tournament; the courses looked amazing, although we didn't play them.
We used the hotel as our base for two days of exploring southern Wales. First stop was Raglan Castle.
Raglan was built in the 1430s in a style more typical of French castles, with massive windows and polygonal, not round, towers. The castle is mostly in ruins today...
...but you can still climb up the Keep.
From there, we drove to the Brecon Beacons National Park with it's (snow-covered!) sandstone peaks, pretty green valleys, and scenic canals.
D loves trains, so we checked out the Brecon Mountain Steam Railway depot, too.
We ended Saturday in the nation's capital, Cardiff. We saw the most important sites -- the Castle:
and the stadium!
Did a lot of fun people-watching over dinner at a restaurant in Cardiff, too. On Sunday we had Easter Brunch at the hotel before taking off for the town of Caerphilly, the site of the largest castle in Wales.
Caerphilly Castle is surrounded by a series of moats and has huge drawbridges to limit access by bad guys.
I guess they thought we looked OK, because they let us in...
...and D even made some new friends!
It's a good thing, too, because these same lads later stormed the castle -- glad we were on their side!
Despite being utterly unable to decipher their language...
(hey, buy a vowel!), we loved Wales!
From Bath, we took the M4 motorway across the Severn River Bridge (at 2 miles, a little bigger than the one with the same name in Annapolis!) to get to Wales. 
We stayed outside the city of Newport at the Celtic Manor Resort & Golf Club. For you golf fans, this will be the location of the 2010 Ryder Cup golf tournament; the courses looked amazing, although we didn't play them.
We used the hotel as our base for two days of exploring southern Wales. First stop was Raglan Castle. 
Raglan was built in the 1430s in a style more typical of French castles, with massive windows and polygonal, not round, towers. The castle is mostly in ruins today... 
...but you can still climb up the Keep.
From there, we drove to the Brecon Beacons National Park with it's (snow-covered!) sandstone peaks, pretty green valleys, and scenic canals. 
D loves trains, so we checked out the Brecon Mountain Steam Railway depot, too.
We ended Saturday in the nation's capital, Cardiff. We saw the most important sites -- the Castle: 
Did a lot of fun people-watching over dinner at a restaurant in Cardiff, too. On Sunday we had Easter Brunch at the hotel before taking off for the town of Caerphilly, the site of the largest castle in Wales. 
Caerphilly Castle is surrounded by a series of moats and has huge drawbridges to limit access by bad guys.
I guess they thought we looked OK, because they let us in... 
It's a good thing, too, because these same lads later stormed the castle -- glad we were on their side! 
Despite being utterly unable to decipher their language... 
(hey, buy a vowel!), we loved Wales!
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