"Pisa's got nothing on us!"

Caerphilly Castle

 This morning, we woke up without much of anything planned and flipped through the "This is Cardiff" tourism book thing the hotel conveniently provides in each room. When we saw a page with "Pisa's got nothing on us", it naturally caught our attention (since Michael has been complaining that Cardiff beats Pisa hands down as a good place to work for a summer). It turns out that not too far from here is the second largest castle in Wales, Castle Caerphilly, and this castle has a leaning tower, too. So we decided to go.
     It was really really neat. The castle -- fortress, really -- was built in the 13th century, and is your classic knights in shining armor and fair maidens sort of thing. There is a HUGE moat/lake system, designed to keep the castle out of the firing range of attacking armies, giant towers, thick walls... it's amazing. The castle had mostly fallen into ruins by the 16th century, but after WWI, the local aristocracy took archeological interest in the site and it's since been extensively restored. But it's neat, because it's not completely rebuilt, so you can still see how thick the walls were where half a tower is missing, and climb on some rubble that used to be a wall, and see staircases that obviously used to lead somewhere, but that somewhere is now missing.
   So that was a wonderful adventure! This evening we're going with Scotty to "Pub Friday" with his workmates, so that should be an adventure of a different sort... (:

Michael and the geese

There were so many birds! We had to walk through those...

Our lunch spot (:

Sorry Michael... it's not nice to take pictures while people are eating

The castle is a little bit awesome

This tower leans about 11 degrees... the leaning tower of Pisa leans about 3 degrees.

These soldiers have been defending the castle for a really long time...

Quite a big wall!

It's an impressive door

The ruined parts of the castle look really cool!

The walls are huge!

The middle defenses... there were three lines of defense in total, including a large moat/lake, an outer wall, a middle open area (where attackers would have no cover if they made it that far) and huge inner walls.

The inner walls dwarf people!

On the battlements

This castle would be really good for hide and go seek

In the guard rooms

The Welsh Flag

The view of the inner courtyard from the front guard house

Even in ruins, the castle in an imposing fortress

And it didn't even rain on us!