Wales Day 1: The lazy Welsh

As we walked into their place, Raghav warned us that Smita is planning to make us all get out at 7am the next day. We all knew at that point itself that we weren't leaving before noon the next day. This was supposed to be an adrenaline high, pushing the physical boundaries type holiday. Coming off of a hectic project, I knew that wasn't going to be the case.

True to form, we all woke up late and lazed the morning away chatting and playing the piano. Finally we got ready and got out just after noon. We had decided that we were going to drive to Snowdonia. A couple of pit stops on the way to fill up our pits and 4 hours got us nicely to within striking distance of Snowdon. Smita had booked us in a hostel in some village no one had ever heard of - Penmachno.

Penmachno is a village in an isolated upland valley, about 4 miles south of Betws-y-Coed (which we still don't know how to pronounce) in Conwy, North Wales. Beautiful surroundings, small windy roads, old church, nice people, cozy cottages and green hills and valleys.

We had booked a bunk-bed room with shared bathroom facilities. While we all settled down, Smita the brilliant planner realized that she had forgotten her hiking boots for this hiking trip. Of course we all made fun of her !

Given that we had a couple of hours of sunlight left, we thought it would be nice to just explore the area a little bit. All jumped back into the car and drove off to Conwy falls. Once we got to Conwy falls, we walked around for about half an hour trying to get to the bottom of the falls, the top of the falls etc. without much success. The authorities had barricaded the falls because it was raining and slippery. After all the waltzing around, I came to the conclusion that Conwy falls is just a false falls.

Making our way back to the Conwy cafe, we ordered pizza and salad for dinner. Or at least so we had thought. While the three of us ate our food, Raghav was sitting twiddling his thumbs because the waiter has never taken down his order. Of course we ordered again and Raghav got his pizza. I ordered a melt-in-your-mouth brownie with some local Bara Brith, a local Welsh ice cream, all this of course to keep Raghav company. I didn't particularly like the Bara Brith, tested coconuty but the brownie was awesome!

Once back in our hostel, some more researching and some Uno and we were all ready for bed.