I awoke on my plush mega-bed to Miya sitting close to me, quietly calling my name. In any other situation, consider that a little strange, but what a fun way to wake up in Wales!
The funny thing is that the room and kitchen was full of people talking and laughing while they made breakfast, but I had slept all through it all! Sleepy me...
I learned that Tom was off finding the key to our house...they hadn't cleaned it at all yesterday since they lost the key. But that's okay Becuase we were going to be gone pretty much all day again and they were going to clean it today for sure.
Darling Katie had actually run to the store and bought us homeless kids some frosted flakes and milk for breakfast, since all our food was at our place. So since if was beautiful and sunny outside again, we ate our breakfast out on the curb again.
About a half hour later, Tom returned to us triumphant: he had a new key! So he let us go to our house and get cleaned up and ready for the day for one hour, which was plenty of time. Less than an hour later, we were all washed, cleaned, packed for another day, and in the van.
On the two hour drive to Hay-on-wye, we saw more beautiful new countryside. We passed a DTR psychology clinic on our way out of the city (*snicker snicker*), Breckon Beacon (a huge hilly national forest that they often drop fresh new training soldiers in to try to survive) and a fabulous tiny gothic church with a large time-worn graveyard. It really was a cool drive!
Okay, so heres a little history lesson for you:
Once upon a time, back in mideval England, the marcher lords built a castle near the river Wye which they called the Hay. Not long after its completion, some peasant families came to the Hay, drawn by its offer to protect them in return for their hard work to cultivate the land. These families built many tiny stone huts, barns, and sheds that they lived in for hundreds of years and through many generations. The Hay and the village survived the test of time and war, a rare accomplishment. Fast forward to the 1970s, to a people trying to make a living off the natural products that their time-proof way of life offered, but that wasnt enough to keep up with the demanding interests of tourists. So the village surrounding the Hay castle made a huge decision: they would take the castle and all the surrounding meager cottages, homes, and barns and turn them all into antique book shops. Their brilliance has paid off, big time.
The whole town is a big book and antique shop. When you walk through Hay-on-Wye, you take a major step back in time through an entire mideval village. Almost nothing new has been built or refurbished there for decades, so everything there has preserved its original layout and structure. The cobbled walkways are uneven and hilly, not sliced into the land for the sake of flatness. It just feels, well, beautifully old.
Every little house and home is a different book shop; some deal in cheap fifty-pence paperbacks, while others only deal in first editions. Some sell old maps of England and London. Others sell produce as fresh as you can get it. Some places sell glass and jewelry, others dabble in very old antiques, and still others are just modern-day plastic tourist trap trash.
While the whole town was adorable in and of itself, there were a few large grassy lawns that surrounded castle walls, each enclosed in great flowering bushes. No noise could be heard of the tourist-filled village below. It was truly a place of special silence. Pretty sure my first thought was that this would be a choice spot for a wedding reception. What's funny is that all the girls in my posse said the exact same thing as we left.
My favorite shop was one very close to the castle. It dealt in very very old antiques and it certainly did not disappoint the vintage-hungry, such as myself. They dealt in the treasures of days gone by, from old musical boxes to long white Cinderella gloves; from genuine fur coats to handmade lace. Mostly everything had a price to reflect its rarity, which is probably a really good thing, as I only have so much room in my suitcase and only so almost nothing in my pocket book. I prefer to look at it as that it was once only half empty. (Just kidding mom and dad, I'm doing just fine on the funds!)
I knew I was really in trouble when I found the staircase to the loft, where they kept all the exquisite old formal dresses. Lydia and I played around with the beautiful old dresses for a while, long enough for Lydia to spot a freakishly huge spider, which she kindly had me go look at. Don't fret, gentle reader, the world no longer needs to worry about that spider procreating. We kept having fun with the dresses, but they were all too big for me, which was a bummer Becuase they had all undergone a major markdown, at least 50% less on most of them for the summer.
Suddenly a lovely yellow dress caught my eye. It was smaller than the rest and was quite plain, but was styled in the traditional Victorian era ball dress form, a lot like something you would see on pride and prejudice or any of those other old Engliand set movies. I couldn't find a tag anywhere on it, but Lydia convinced me to try it on. I came out of the dressing room just as Katie came up. She gasped and said that the dress was an uncannily perfect fit. She also told me that it looked like it was a raw silk material and was surprised that it had lasted a long time. The more I got looking at it, the more I liked it, despite the obvious seam lines you could see from my jeans underneath. Look, we were pressed for time.
After we looked around a bit more, I took the dress down to the lady running the shop and told her honestly that there was no tag, but the rest were marked down to about 20 pounds each. I told her that it was the only one that seemed to fit, but I couldn't spend a lot on it. She responded by thanking me, cutting the price down by five more pounds than the other dresses, and that was that. Now that I look back, I wonder what would have happened If I had tried to encourage an even lower price on the only dress without a tag, but I'm glad I was honest about it.
I found things for Gretchen and Boo at two other shops. I so wanted to buy a set of beautiful welsh hand-painted china for 6 pounds at another antique shop, but I didn't want to buy everything in my first week,and I was concerned about bringing china home safely. So I left it.
For lunch, my posse went to a sit down place to eat, but I really wanted to see more during my last hour there, so I picked up a paper bag of fresh fruit and veggies for under two pounds and met up with Miya. She was talking with a very classy and very old gentleman as they were walking up the hill. As I met up with them, she introduced me as a friend, to which Doug (the old man) responded by tipping his hat to me and handing me a homemade toffe that I had seen being sold at another shop before he walked away, trotting his cane beside him. Class.
Miya and I finished our tour of Hay-on-Wye together before heading back to the van by the scheduled meeting time.
We then went and looked at two marcher lord castles in the area. These two castle ruins were absolutely fantastic. I could almost imagine the young soldiers walking through the inner courtyard we were sitting in, trying to make a name for themselves by defending the small castle from the Saxons.
On our way home from the second castle, we stopped off at Tesco for a grocery run. I've realized that I live on a diet of 60% bread for a few different reasons. First: because it is ridiculously convenient. N breakfast or lunch prep, no cooking, just throw it in a ziplock bag, keep it in your backpack all day for whenever you need it, it doesn't need to be kept cold or hot, and there are a lot of different delicious types. Second: it's cheap. Especially here, I've found. I bought five different high quality types of bread, wraps, croissants, and of course crumpets, all for a pound each! Now I just have to keep walking it off every day so I don't get too fat from it :) third: it's just heckin delicious!
I also got milk, produce, potatoes, and toppings, all for about 10 pounds. Guess who stayed under her 20 pound grocery allowance this week? That's right: yours truly.
After we got home and I put everything away, I had a little bit of time to go over to the other house to check on my emails: the first time since I had arrived. Since almost everyone at my house came too, there wasnt enough room in the living room for all twenty of us to sit, so about eight of us sat in the tiny front hallway and on the second floor steps. When someone from that house tried to step through us all, I began a kind custom of humming the Indiana jones theme song, just to make the booby trapped passageway a little more real for them. It's all about the experience, you know?
To my delight, I had a few emails. I spent my evening replying to messages and to get some almost-miscommunications sorted. I also found out I would probably have time the next day to Skype home. It was getting late, so I packed up, walked home with a few girls, made some American chips for dinner (French fries) and went to bed
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