Northern Wales

On the weekend of Weston's birthday, we went to northern Wales.  We bargained with Weston to use his birthday weekend for a vacation, and in return he would get a bigger Lego set for his birthday (when we returned to the states).  For the most part, Weston is a homebody and when he has to go out, he says, "You're ruining my weekend!"  Well, we wanted to take advantage of every weekend we had left in the UK, so we had to make a bargain.  We took the kids out of school on Friday.  

On Thursday July 12th, after school, we drove to Wales.  We stayed in an Airbnb for 2 nights.  On Friday the 13th (Weston's birthday), we had breakfast (french toast & bacon) and Weston opened a couple of presents.  Then went to Caernarfon Castle, which was pretty impressive.  It was pretty cool to watch the bridge open up for an incoming boat.  The kids had fun posing by the statues.  

In the afternoon, we headed to Snowdonia, where we rode a cog train up to the Snowdon summit.  It was a slow ride - it took about an hour each way.  When we got to the top, we wandered around the summit for a little bit.  Alex decided to walk down the mountain instead of taking the train back.  I just told him that we didn't want to wait around very long for him.  He ended up running most of the way (about 4.5 miles) and got down the mountain before we did.  He can now say that he beat a train down the mountain... Alex made it down in about 45 minutes, stopping to take some pictures along the way.  It was entertaining for the kids to watch for Alex on the path.  We did catch glimpses of him, but he was too far away to get a photo of him.  He was one of the specks in the photo with the path down the mountain.   

We had some cake in the evening and watched a movie.  

Snowdon summit

On Saturday, we went swimming in the morning (in the pool that was part of the complex where our Airbnb was).  I don't have any pictures from that.  Then we headed to the beach on Isle of Anglesey, where we took a hike to a lighthouse. 

It was pretty late when we headed back - we tried to drive through Liverpool to see a little bit of the city, but the traffic was really bad.  We also had trouble figuring out where to go.  We ended up paying a toll a couple of times in the process.  And it was already late - the daylight is deceptive - it was 8:00pm when we were going through Liverpool.  We still had 3 hours left to get back to Durham.