Chirk and Powis Castles (Wales)

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Sorry it took so long to update this! I have been super busy!

So last weekend Andrea and I took a day trip to Wales to see a couple castles. It was organized by the International Students Association so we did not have to arrange travel or anything stressful like that.

What WAS stressful was that the day before I came down with probably one of the worst colds of my life. I was super sick but I refused not to go, so I packed an entire box of tissues into my bag and soldiered on. We had to leave really early to go. So early, in fact, an friend back in America (you know who you are) was still awake! The bus ride to Wales was probably close to what hell is like. I was trapped in a small, hot and humid space with about 50 other people with a snuffed up nose that was so intense it was painful and I could barely think straight......FOR TWO HOURS. Needless to say when we got to the first castle I jumped off the bus as soon as I could.

The first castle we went to was Chirk Castle, which was originally built in the 1200s I believe. It was not a tremendously large castle, and it has been occupied right up to today, which means most of it has been updated from its original state. In fact, the family who owns the castle still comes to stay there every once and a while!

The castle grounds were sprawling gardens with actual shaped hedges all around! We spent a lot of time wondering around in them. When we actually went into the castle it was split up into several parts. The main family quarters was not open yet when we arrived, so we explored the "Medieval" part of the castle, aka the rooms that never got updated as time went on and now were just empty. We did get to go into the dungeon though, which was really cool/creepy. It was down one of those famous medieval castle winding stone staircases of doom which are slippery and steep and almost impossible to walk down. The dungeon itself was literally just a pit with no light in it. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be imprisoned there.

I can't imagine how much upkeep these hedges! And there were so many! We even saw a few shaped like animals. It was all very Alice in Wonderland.

I really loved the colors of the vines against the pale stone. They were actually one of the few plants changing colors even though we are well into autum!

Andrea loves to frolic.....
The rest of the castle was pretty cool, but it was updated to show it in Victorian times, which is not my favorite era. It was also a bit of a blur because I was somewhat dying of my cold from hell.

The above photo is part of the wall carvings in one of the "medieval" rooms.

And of course what palace is complete without a library??

A 50 minutes hell bus ride later and we were at Powis castle, which is supossedly world famous for its gardens! This was also an updated castle as it is also occasionally still used. Prince Charles is the most recent monarch to have stayed there, but many more such as Queen Victoria have in the past. It was kind of cool seeing the actual bed all these famous names from history have slept in! Really this castle was filled to the brim of the gaudy exuberance that characterized the Victorian era. Everything was overdone, shiny, and the rooms were stuffed to the brim with kick knacks.

The gardens were fairly spectacular though, and there was this awesome dragon gate that I fell in love with. There was also this family of super friendly peacocks that would come up to you looking for food!