Then, we left the hostel in Broadhaven for the short jaunt over to Pembroke Castle. Pembroke Castle is the most castle-ish castle we visited, which is to say that it most greatly conforms to the preconceived notions I had of what castles are. We took the tour, which was delivered by a delightfully eccentric gentleman in a hat and sporting a magnificent beard. Combined with Professor Murrin, who is quite eccentric himself at times, they were a pretty spectacular team of Welsh historians. Most of the info went in one ear and out the other, but the visual feast was far more memorable. In the gift shop afterwards, I snagged some Pembroke rock for Craig and then a stocking cap for myself. I wanted a keepsake from Wales and I thought, "What's more practical for a U of C student than a good hat."
That dark one is patently a horrible picture, but hey we were in a cave. More importantly, it captures our tour guide's amazing enthusiasm.Another bus ride took us out of Pembroke and towards St. David's Church, which has the distinction of being, well, really old and yet still very much an operational house of worship. That makes it a weird combination of tourist attraction, cathedral, and museum. And yes, it has a gift shop. Does your church have a gift shop? Was it recently visited by Prince Charles? Thought not.
After just a short stop at St. David's, it was a *surprise* bus ride that took us to Baskerville Hall, which is a hotel that was the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes' novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. We were split up into only two rooms. All the boys were in one room and all the girls in another. That sounded like nightmare potential, but somehow it actually worked out well enough. They had a fancy dinner prepared for us in the "music room." I wasn't much impressed but they were trying to be fancy at least. There was a vegetable soup followed by a chicken entree and then capped by a slice of chocolate cake that was so nauseatingly rich that I couldn't bear to even take one bite. The soup was fine but the chicken was far too dry, which not even the gravy could reclaim. The conversation was far worse than the food for me, though. I came to realize that I'm about the worst dinner party guest ever. Inevitably, it seems these kind of conversations seem to turn to movies or books and I'm more or less clueless as regards both. It may seem strange for an English major to be clueless about books but as far as modern books go it's true.
After that dinner we headed out for some dancing. Actually, we didn't really have to go out at all. The interesting thing about Baskerville Hall is that it also has a dance club attached to it and since it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing around to do, chavs from all around the area are bussed in to get drunk are dance there. Unfortunately, I was a feeling a bit down and couldn't properly enjoy the absurdity of drunken Welsh hicks dancing but what I did see was pretty funny indeed. Thankfully, our trusty Emily was around to talk some sense in to me and cheered me up a little bit before I took a long, hot shower and headed to bed. Here's a very poor picture of Baskerville Hall that I took from the bus to go out on.
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