Days 8 and 9

Day 8:

We spent our first full day in Wales with my penpal Casey and her family, at Chirk Castle. Chirk Castle is a really really old castle that has surprisingly survived and has been restored to look just like how it used to. It was so cool to see all the old stuff, in the library there was a book from the 1500s! We wandered around there all afternoon and after a late lunch, I went home with Casey and the rest of my family went back to our {adorable} cottage. 

At Casey's we talked and had dinner from a "chippie," kind of like W. H. O. P. back in America. We had chicken and sweet corn pizza, which was surprisingly good. Then we went bowling, I was only 6 points off from winning the second round, another surprise! I was given a tour around Wrexham, the main town that Casey's school is in, and saw shops, the school, a catherdral, everything. After a long day it was nice to go back to Casey's to sit a watch a movie, The Princess Bride, which Casey hadn't seen before {*gasp* can you even imagine??} but luckily she liked it, so we can stay friends ;)

Day 9: 

We woke up at 9 {which was quite early because we may or may not have stayed up talking...} and went around 11 to meet up with my family at the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. It's this huge aqueduct over a valley and river that you can walk across. It had amazing views. And wasn't actually too scary! I took tons of photos on my camera, but here's a photo off Wikipedia so you can see what it was like:

{looking back the way we came, you can see the sidewalk on the right that we all walked on}

After that we went to the town of Llangollen, a cute town with lots if shops and a train station. Casey's grandfather had volunteered at the station fairly regularly since her mom was little so they knew all about it. We got to see the train, an old fashioned steam engine, come into the station and then turn around and go back. It was SO loud! That had great pictures too, but once again they're all on my camera. {sorry!}

We all had lunch and ice cream for dessert {honeycomb ice cream is actually really good!} and wandered around the shops. Then down to the river that had rocks you could climb on. Nick, Casey and I went all over the rocks while our parents talked and watched. We saw guys jump off the side of the river bank into the water, that was a combination of cool and terrifying. Cool because it looked like it could be fun, but terrifying because the current was swift and the depth of the water was unknown. There was very little room for them to mess up and hit the wrong spot of the river. Picture of all of the are, again, on the camera. *sigh*

We all went out to eat for dinner since we had to leave the next morning and had a great time. We had the waitress take our picture:

{thank you Casey for, among other things, posting your photos on facebook so soon!

{Nick, me, mom, dad, Kings, Kerry, Casey}

I had a great time in Wales, thanks to those 3 amazing people pictured above. They are some of the kindest people in the world, everyone deserves to have friends like them at some point. Hopefully Casey and I will stay in touch for the rest of our lives, if we don't that would be so terrible and I know we would both regret it. Thank you all for everything!!

I still have to write something for days 10 and 11 but it's 10:30 here and we have to get up early to go to Paris tomorrow{!!} so I'll post them tomorrow! Goodnight everyone! :)