After the Cybercafe in Oxford, we began our trip to Northwestern Wales. After some phone calls and confusion, we made our way through the English countryside to Machynlleth. This is an amazing town with a lot of Welsh character. At the local coffeeshop everyone speaks and orders in Welsh. Our first night here, we had a dinner of Indian food which took about one hour to prepare, 10 minutes to eat, and an hour to give up on waiting for the check. After dinner, we went to the local working man's pub that our taxi driver warned us to avoid. Inside we found very drunk and normal locals, mostly quietly chatting or loading a drunken friend into a cab. I tried to fit in by ordering a half pint of Guiness, but was unable to even finish half. I had to leave the rest, assuring that we'd never be served in this town again. The next day found us exhausted, as we looked for a new place to stay. We got a B&B in Machynlleth for the niht, and got tickets on the train to Tywyn in order to look for a B&B. While waiting for a train out of town, we went to the local Celtic Heritage museum, Celtica. It was said to be acvisual delight and wonderment, we thought it was a total bore. Plastic models arguing with each other, terrible acting, and unbelievable (literally) special effects.

In Tywyn, we first went to the TIC and got some information about hotels, and reserved one. Then we went to the Church of St. Cadfan, which was mentioned in The Grey King. Then we saw the Cinema call the Assembley Rooms. A little further down, we treated ourselves to Honey Icecream from Halo dipped in Amoretti. Instead of taking the train back to Machynlleth from Tywyn, we walked along the ocean to the next town of Aberdyfi. There were these amazing black clay square pools along the beach that we walked on near Tywyn. It was a beautiful secluded beach for almost all of the 4 miles. The waves were crashing as the tide moved out, leaving tidepools filled with jellyfish and hermit crabs behind. Once we arrived in Aberdyfi, we got some fish and chips, chicken and chips, and some mushed peas, as part of the Queen's Jubilee Celebration. We realised we were very late for the last train of the night, and ran for it. We then discovered that it wasn't that far, and that the train was very late. Geneva had to urinated quite badly. After eating my Haddock, chips and peas so quickly, and running, I really had to burp. So... I did. It was one of those rolling burps that starts in your belly and leisurely works its way up to your mouth. After the burp, Geneva started laughing terribly at me, and making me laugh, so I started laughing, and then she starting crying because this was making her have to urinated even more, so I started laughing and crying and squeaking my breaths. This made Geneva laugh/cry even more and nearly made her pee her pants. After about 20 minutes of nothing but nonstop laughter, pants holding on Geneva's end, squeaking and crying on mine, the giggle-fit ended.

I then started eating my mushed peas, and Geneva HAD to mention my squeaking. I then went into hysterics again and the peas went flying out of my mouth, and that was it. We were lost to the giggle-gods for another 20 minutes. In fact, while writing this, I had 2 entire giggle fits.

After the train, I spoke to the conductor about refunding our tickets, and he spent about 30 minutes helping us make our new ticket reservations for Machynlleth to London. We found our his name was Alwyn, and he was terribly cute. Very welsh and nice and gentile. He was having trouble printing one of the tickets, and had to hand-write part of it, and he was very upset about this. We left on our way back to Melin-y-wig, our B&B, when we heard behind us, "Girls! Girls!" It was Alwyn. He had finally gotten the ticket machine to work and was running down the street after us to give us the new ticket. He was terribly sweet. Walking past some bars, we got cat calls from out of towners, having a pint while watching the World Cup. They called from behind us, "Helo chickens, come have a pint!" Weirdos.

The next morning, Monday, we woke up, ate breakfast, and then headed to Tywyn. We cancelled a B&B that we had reserved there, and then headed to the Monday market in the field. We saw at least 20 people wearing Slipknot Iowa shirts. Is Iowa the name of a new album or is Wales just insane? I got a paid of British Socks, and Geneva got a few thongs of the British Flag. She looks hot in them, let me tell you. Then we rushed back to the train just in time to go to Aberdyfi. There we visited a few shops, and then had tea at a tearoom. We then had to hurriedly pay our bill and rush off again to the las train of the afternoon to Machylleth. We then toured the town looking for a phone card and failing. It was still Bank Holiday because of the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and we were quite annoyed. We spent about an hour at the payphones cancelling our appointment to stay with Quakers in Cardiff, cancelling our train tickets to Cardiff, and trying to reach friends.

After all this, we went to Aberdyfi for the Jubilee party. Music, lights, barbeque on the beach. There were people wearing the British flag and everyone was having a great time. Soon, they lit a huge bonfire on one of the mountains called a beacon, and then we had a fuse blown. The crowd struck up a british song to the tune of America the Beautiful. We laughed way too hard.

Then, we went to go get our train and after about an hour, realised that it was a friday only train, so we were stranded. We went to the only open building, a pub called the dovey inn, and asked them to call us a cab. we waited for 2 hours for a cab, and no one wanted to go all the way to Machynlleth. So, we started to walk the 12 miles there....

More to come later! I have to go catch a train to take me near Cader Idris!
At long last! Pictures!