Got interrupted last night. Had to head out with the English students for their last evening in Bangor. We had a pretty cool time, we headed down to a little bar/pub on Beach Street. We had a few pints and played pool and had a general good time. Anyway, to pick up where I left off yesterday evening. The castle in Beaumaris is really nice. The castle has multiple defenses, unfortunately is was never completed. I spent a few hours there walking around and taking pictures. I also walked around the outside of the castle and snapped a few pictures from up the street.
I then sat in the town square right next to the castle and ate some crackers that I had purchased earlier this week. There had been a nice lady on the bus going to work who pointed out a few things to do while I was in Beaumaris. I walked down to this pub down from the town square for a pint. The pub was built in 1462 or something. I had a great time there talking to the locals and drinking beer. I met a Welshman named Tid. He was very cool and tried to teach me some Welsh. My prior Welsh scribbles is the phonetic spelling of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The cool bartender tried to spell the town name as well, from memory, she was pretty close with 65 letters!
Hanging out in the pub was great. Pubs are not bars, there are no televisions, no jukeboxes, no dancing, no radio, just beer and people. The pub experience is different that anything I have experienced in America. In the pub there was a father and son hanging out. They were pub hoping and heading to Conwy next. The father was 91 years old. His son was 64. Neither of them looked their age. The father was very nice. He had a heavy accent but I could understand most of what he said. His son would fill in the gaps when necessary. We had a great time harassing each other and doing a lot of laughing. After a while they bailed, their meter had run out, so they headed to Conwy.
I hung out and talked to Tid and we talked about Wales and the language. One of his buddies stopped by and we talked some more. Tid's buddies brother had just trained and ran the London marathon. We talked about that and I listened to them talked about a variety of things while I sipped my beer. I hung out in the pub until 5 or 6:00pm and then headed back to Bangor. I really had to take a piss when I got back to Bangor, but the public toilets were closed when I arrived. I headed up the street to another pub and bought another beer and used their toilet. I was really getting pissed by that point and I'm pretty sure I left part of my beer sitting on the table when I walked out.
It was getting dark by that point and walking back to the hostel did me some good. When I got back, Josh and James, two of the English students, convinced me to head out and do some drinking with them. We had a great time drinking, talking shit and arm wrestling. I showed them some of my best arm wrestling tricks and we drank a bunch of beer. I was pretty smashed walking around downtown Bangor. We must have hit about 5 pubs that night and we also tried to get into a dance club at some point in the evening. They wouldn't let us in because it was passed 11:00pm or some crap. We tried to see if we could get in the back but it was all closed up. We also went for curry somewhere in Bangor. The Indians didn't like us very much because they presented us with the bill right after we ordered, I think they thought we were going to dine and ditch. The curry was pretty good and we also had some more beer while we ate. I think we got kicked out at the end of the evening because they were closing.
Somehow we made it back to the hostel. On the way we met up with some Irish bartenders we talked to earlier in the evening and showed them the way to the hostel. One of them was pretty silly, who ran into a kebap shop and scared some of the locals. It was pretty funny. We also tried to get the Irish into the hostel for free but they had already called ahead and made a reservation, oh well. I immediately went to bed and probably woke up the other poor bastards in the dorm. I pretty much just passed out and probably snored heavily because my throat was killing me the next day.
Yesterday I was majorly hung over for most of the day. I didn't do too much except some research on the Internet at the local library, bought a phone card and scheduled my trip back to Stratford-upon-avon. I have to book my bus trip from Stratford to Oxford, but I figure I'll do that tomorrow.
Yesterday evening I was starting to feel a little better after a few more aspirin and a couple of beers with the English students. Yesterday was their last evening in Bangor so we went out. We had about four pints at a pub down the street.
On our way back the English were getting very silly, pissing in the street and tackling signs and being English. When we got back to the hostel we did a little joke on Peter, one of the blokes, and physically moved his car and removed his windshield wipers. It was all meant as a joke. Afterwards the English students wanted to cook the remainder of their food, which was a great substitute for Del Taco. Someone got the idea of using a permanent marker to draw stuff on Peter's face while he slept. He, unfortunately, woke up when his English classmates tried to draw a beard or whatever they were going to try to draw on his face. The English student's teach or coach also woke up and he was pretty pissed off. They guy had been an asshole all week so I just ignored him.
The next morning Peter was not too happy about what we did to his vehicle. The jerk teacher and Peter tracked me down and told me they had called the police, which was a bunch of crap, so I apologized to Peter just before he left. He seemed to be cool with everything. Josh and James also tracked me down that morning to let me know what was going on. I let them know their dickhead teacher had already stopped by, they told me he was just trying to scare me. Anyway nothing seems to have come of the issue. The hostel people didn't seem to mind or care.
Today I spent the day in Caernarfon and visited the castle there. It was a very large castle and very cool to walk around. Edward I's knew how to build a castle. I took the bus out there and back. Later on tonight I'll finish packing for tomorrow. My hand is really tired from all the writing so I'll sign off for now!
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