One A Week: Birthday in Wales

Not the baby's, to be clear. Mine.

We rented a car and took a four-day trip to Wales. We stayed in Swansea and visited Three Cliffs Bay and Rhossili beach. We also stopped at Margam Castle (and park) on our way there.

Andy very bravely driving our rental car. He did great!

Margam Park

Inside Margam Castle

And outside

I think this was an abbey

Jane has really gotten braver with her climbing lately. She never used to attempt the wobbly things like this.

Jane took some pictures at dinner. This place had good pizzas--we all had one. Jane's was gluten-free, of course. They didn't score quite as highly in our book when our breakfast the next morning took two hours all told.

Another Jane shot

Ice cream with freshly-made chocolate sauce just for her!

The bay near our hotel (on what turned out to be the nicest day weather-wise)

Is this a full English breakfast, or a full Welsh breakfast?

This place was kind enough to let us bring in our own cereal for Jane.

Sand dune at Three Cliffs Bay. I told Jane about Sleeping Bear Dunes and that we'd go there someday.

Beautiful cliffs

Jane being Supergirl while I drink my Frappuccino

Apologies, but things always get messed up when I upload pictures from our two different phones, so we'll be jumping around a bit.

I missed the Welcome to Wales sign, so I snapped this instead.

You may not know that blackberries grow all over the place in the UK. We paid for parking at Margam Park, but I think I earned our money back with berries.

A carving that has drumming slats and is cool.

Being silly

Seriously. You guys can't imagine it.

Jane driving a model boat around

Peekaboo!

Margam Castle (and my family) at the top of the steps.

Selfie. Welsh-fie?

Stopping along the water after dinner the first night

Yarrrrr

The rocks had netting on them and Andy said how sad it was that they had to keep the rocks restrained like that.

I wonder how long these stay looking so vivid with all the rain. This was at Mumbles Pier

Piratitude

There was a staircase down to the beach at Mumbles Pier where we saw some cool tide pools.

And I found a quartz smiley face.

Affogatos for us and gelato for her. Unfortunately we think it had some gluten in it.

Rhossili. There were cool tall grassy features (I'm sure Andy could tell you what they were called. Were they just cliffs?) and then a long path down to the beach. It was too windy to stay up high for long.