Roman's and Ruins

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We began the tour with a visit to Britain's most preserved Roman town - Caerleon - "Fort of the Legion". Explored the amphitheater where gladiators fought to their death, the bath house around which much of a Roman soldier's life revolved and tried to visit the National Legionary Museum, which didn’t open until late due to a children’s Halloween program. The gift shop had a small display of artifacts we looked at and then we went next door to St Cadoc Church of Wales first started in the 15th century. We also drove by lots of other Roman ruins – this area was occupied by the Romans for some time. We drove through Caerwent, which was once a thriving market town and saw more evidence of invader occupation 1900 years ago.

We then went to some spectacular monastic ruin at Tintern Abbey (http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html), which was very large in size – I can just imagine what it looked like in the old days. The abbey was the home of Cistercian Monks. Walked around the ruins, took pictures and then went to lunch at Abbey Mill Craft Centre – mushroom soup and ham & chicken pie. YUM! YUM! They make meat pies (we call them pot pies back in the US) out of everything here in the UK.

We then continued on to Raglan Castle (http://www.castlewales.com/raglan.html ) described as the finest late-medieval fortress in Britain - a majestic 15th century Welsh castle. According to our guide, Wales has 641 castles and this was the last one built. It started raining, the wind picked up and it got cold. We walked around a bit and took some pictures and then left. Some of the more adventurous young folks climbed up one of the towers and walked around the castle top.

After that we went to dinner at a local pub, Y Mochyn Du (The Black Pig), http://ymochyndu.com/index_english.html. Roxie had cawl (lamb) soup & a large salad while I had Lasagna w/Welsh beef. Excellent food.

Hope it’s not raining tomorrow – we want to do Cardiff Castle and a few other places.

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Comments

[Rick jones]

And those of us in Paris, Thornburgs and Jones, our highlights of today were Eiffel Tower, Louvre and Notre Dame, which coincidentally celebrates its 800 year anniversary tomorrow, Nov 1, which is also a religious holiday, no school, etc. In the evening, we had our celebratory drinks.