Hello folks. Fresh back from our Easter break I am all fired up to blog my travel. Unfortunately, it wasn't that sensational. Snowdonia (I am sure I will offend someone here) didn't have much effect on my pulse rate in comparison to all the other "dramatic" places we have been to. However, the company was good and the weather was not half as bad as we had expected, so all is well that ends well.
I might add at this point that most of UK's scenic attractions reveal their prettiness to only the hikers. We Indian's on the other hand prefer only to hike up to our Temples. Otherwise, we simply pop off the bus and have our Aloo chat while looking at the scenery. Our scenic spots are also well populated with thousand other tourists and hawkers, and sometimes it takes a really tall man to view the scenery over their head.
So, I do enjoy the untouched quality of the scenic spots in UK. It reminds me of my Missouri trip years ago where I had gone to visit the Kempty falls that had more hawkers, tourist guides and dhobis washing clothes than water in it. There was a long flight of almost 500 stairs to climb down and back for this jolly madness as well. Even the monkeys were sniggering at us for taking the effort.
To remove that trauma, this time we hiked to the Aber falls in Snowdonia. Unfortunately, our planner had missed the hiking part in his description and we were not ready for it. However, it was a gentle slope of half an hour walk at a steady pace to the falls. So we weren't too deterred. There was plenty of barren trees (apparently they didn't get the memo that spring has arrived), hollowed out trees and mountain streams to keep us distracted on our way. 
Aber Falls was predictably non-spectacular, but gave us enough space to click the dozen or so we-were-there photographs. We also realized that people who took that hike had brought their picnic lunch and we were very hungry. Additionally encouraged by an urge to visit the toilet, we started a rapid decent to civilization. As usual, the road seemed unending, legs started aching, hunger started gnawing and the clouds rolled in to put the icing on the cake. We made up for all the discomfort by tearing into some muffins.We also conveniently forgot that everything closes early here even if the day is much longer. Consequently, we missed out some train rides and boat rides and had to drive around aimlessly. Compared to Scotland and even Lake District, the scenery was somewhat drab and the roads very nice and boring.
The other highlight of our trip was probably the Tram to Great Orme, which crawls up a semi-steep hill to give a nice view and an experience. It was a little too short for me though. But we have come to expect that in UK. The Great Orme Head over looked the sea and gave us some nice views and photo opportunities. I also got the chance to test my new zoom lens on some unsuspecting crows and gulls.
The final day of our trip was washed out by rain. It was actually remarkable that we were not rain-ed in before that. We made the best of it by taking a very very boring steam engine ride, which had great views of sheep, sheep and more sheep. We entertained ourselves by guessing which IPL league team they should belong to (the black sheep became Chennai Super Kings for some reason!).
We topped off that day by wondering inside a slate mine listening to the Welsh version of King Arthur's life and all the excitement finally made us so hungry that we had to invade a Indian restaurant on our way back to gobble some spicy food. Unfortunately, they also got on our nerve by serving the food really late. But we ended on a good note as the waiters popped up with a few roses before we could settle the bill and we had some good laughs over it. Now to start looking for the "budget" destination for the next long weekend.
