Where: Swansea, Wales  Cost To Enter: Free

Hours: Open Year Round

Find: helpful information on the Cadw site.

Date I visited: Almost every day in the 2003-04 school year, September/October 2008

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My Perception

I won’t lie to you, Swansea is not Wales’ greatest castle.  At one point I even described it as a pile of rocks, and then a very snobby Englishman informed me that that pile of rocks was older than my entire country.  Yes, he was right, but keep in mind that I am someone who loved castles so much that I went on to declare a life long goal to visit all the castles of Wales, I was quoting a Welshman when I declared this place a pile of rocks, and the dude correcting me was ENGLISH.

Overall, it was a pretty weird conversation.

Swansea’s pretty, shitty pile of rocks sits in the city centre.  The ruins are quite small; you can walk around them freely as you pass from shopping at New Look, to going for a quick bowl or catching a flick at the cinema.

The Story

I should only give Swansea Castle 1/5 castles, really.  So where do they get the extra two?  Pure sentimental value.

Have you ever heard of Pizza Express?  If you are Welsh, you are rolling your eyes.  Of course you have.  If you are American, you might have a question mark floating above your head.  Basically, Pizza Express is fancy date place for Uni students.  It’s a chain (which means that you had one in your home town- it’s familiar), it serves pizza (a student staple in all countries everywhere), and it’s kind of fancy (compared to the sticky floored place with £1 bottle Wednesday- that’s almost assonance!  See, we learn in Uni.).

The Pizza Express in Swansea is right next door to the Swansea Castle.  And one Saturday evening in May 2004, my husband and I had our first date at the Swansea Pizza Express.  We walked in to a packed restaurant without reservations and somehow wound up with the table with the only “view” of the castle.

First date: castle view.  Now that’s worth two more castle points, no?

Grade: 

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I fell in love with Welsh castles the first time I locked eyes on one in 2003.  It’s been 12 years, and castles and I are still in out honeymoon phase!  This post is part of a series called Castles in Wales.  My goal is to visit (almost) all of the castles in Wales.  Keep track of my progress here.

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