Cardiff

Went out to Cardiff this weekend. That’s the capital city of Wales. It’s pretty much as far south as you can get in Wales. There were lots of places to shop, and we also visited Cardiff Castle. It’s another one of those castles that are sort of crumbling, so they were doing some structural work on parts of it, but it was still nice. We walked along the ramparts and up the top of the main tower, which has a moat around it.

It’s a pretty big castle and there’s an enclosed courtyard with the actual living quarters inside, more like a manor.

There was also a little museum for the Welsh military. Apparently they had a goat as their mascot and there were about seven incarnations of Taffy either mounted on the walls or fully stuffed. And there was some kind of machine gun thing outside.

I was a complete geek and went to the Doctor Who exhibit. Doctor Who is very culturally important to the UK!! Carolyn understood, but Alyssa clearly thought we were crazy. For anyone else who cares about British/Welsh sci-fi (anyone?) I have pictures of the TARDIS and Daleks and other random stuff. And I made sure to get a picture of myself on the Torchwood invisible lift in front of the fountain outside the Millennium Center.

Moving away from my geekout, we saw the Millennium Center where they perform plays and opera and things.

We stayed round until it was dark so we could see everything all lit up and it was very pretty.

If you cut the wording in half diagonally, you can see the Welsh writing on the left of the building and then the English translation on the right which says, “in these stones horizons sing.”

Aberystwyth

Stayed in town for the weekend catching up on reading and running errands. I also got my hair cut. Chopped about half of it off and had layers put in. I fail at styling it properly, but it’s nice not to have such long hair. The wind off the ocean is killer.

The ocean itself, however, is fantastic. It was a warm day, so I went down to the beach and took some shots.

Then I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the stairs I used to come down from the boardwalk, so I had to climb over these boulders to get to a damaged stairway.

I start to feel guilty if I don’t climb a hill every day now, so I also climbed up the mountainous hill right by my flat.

Here are some lovely views of the ocean and the town from high up.

And when you get to the top of the hill, guess what’s there? FRISBEE GOLF!! I’m not even kidding. The Welsh clearly have their priorities straight.

Bath - City and Abbey

As previously stated, Bath is an absolutely gorgeous city. All the buildings are made of a gold limestone crafted in the Georgian architectural style, and the Avon River runs right through.

Here’s the Circus. The buildings go all the way around in a circle. There’s also a place called the Royal Crescent that looks almost exactly the same, but just goes around in a semicircle.

There’s a lot of park and garden areas with some flowers already coming up.

We also found some of the famous red phonebooths.

And visited the Bath Abbey. The stained glass windows are beautiful.

Bath - Roman Baths

Bath is an absolutely gorgeous city. We headed straight out to Stonehenge first, but when we got back we went to the Roman Baths which were also gorgeous.

The Romans built the baths over natural hot springs and they became a popular spa area. They were also associated with the goddess Minerva and people routinely chucked money and, apparently, curses (“Docimedis has lost two gloves. He asks that the person who has stolen them should lose his minds and his eyes in the temple where she appoints”) into the water.

The frigiderium –a bath filled with freezing cold water– may be the prettiest of all the baths. Sadly, I don’t have a good picture of it since it’s in a dark underground room, but it’s a large, round pool with incredibly clear green water that sparkles like hell because people toss in money like it’s a fountain (2p from me) and the light glances off.

And here's Alyssa, Lisa and I with our audio guides which look like first generation cell phones.