Hello from Wales! I am posting from Cardiff, but unfortuanately there will be no pictures until I get back to London. Yesterday we took a bus from London to Cardiff. The moment we were in Wales, we started seeing Welsh everywhere! Every street sign, ad, etc is in English and Welsh which makes it much slower to scan the sign to find the information you need because theere is so much gibberish on the signes. Once we got here, we checked into our hostel and then went to grab dinner. On the way, we saw Cardiff Castle and a prison. For dinner, we went to a pub called the Cardiff Cottage. I ended up getting Cardiff chilli nachos and a Black Cherry Bulmers. The nachos were delicious and came with chilli, sour cream, guacamole and rice, but no cheese. It was really good and then we finished the meal with sticky toffee pudding. After dinner, we walked back to our hostel and saw lots of people out and about. There were people playing drums, stag and hen parties, and lots of people giving trying to give us fliers about clubs. It is a cool city with some old towers sprinkled in. When we got to our room, we watched an episode of doctor who to prepare for the doctor who experience and crashed early. This morning we got up and I took a shower. The hostel is much nicer than I was expecting and my shower was warm and with good water pressure. After getting ready we went and had our free continental breakfast. I was even able to pack myself a sandwich for lunch. Eleanor and Kate then headed out for the Doctor Who Experience. It was rather pricy and given that I am not a Doctor Who fan, I figured it would not be worth it. Thus, I spent the morning wandering through Cardiff.
I first went through the market which was dirt cheap (70 p for tea, 2 pounds for a sandwich), but super overwhelming because everyone was speaking Welsh so I did not buy anythin. Then I ventured to the visitor centre to get ideas of what to do. The woman strongly recommended the Natural History Museum, something we were not planning to do. She recommended we spend a day there so I decided would not have the time and instead ventured towards the bay. It was rainy and chilly but the bay was really prettty. There were some boat tours, cute restaurants, and fun statues. I saw the National Assembly Hall and decided to go in. I had to go through security and ended up waiting behind a tour group. Once inside, I realized the only thing I could do was go to a cafe or tiny shop and thus promptly left since I could not see anything without a tour. Whoops! Then I wandered into the Millenium centre and looked around a bit before sitting down and reading my brochures. I met up with Eleanor and Kate and we wandered through the shops a bit. We found the most ridiculous store called "Americandy", but most of the candy was not American. There were; however, fruit loops, lucky charms, pibb extra and coke vanilla. The weather had begun to clear up so we walked to the city center to catch the bus to the Natural History Museum. Our timetable we had recieved was incorrect so we ended up with half an hour to kill. We went to the local shopping mall and wandered around it. The first store we hopped into was this strange liquor shop. You would buy a glass bottle and then you would buy the alcohol by volume. There were some strange flavors, and it was really expensive! One of the wines was 114 pound/100 ml but some of the spirits were much cheaper, 4 pounds/100 ml. Then we went to this knick knack type place that had so many adorable umbrellas, wall decorations, christmas decorations, scarves, purses, and furniture. I found this adorable purse that was a crossbody with a snap and zipper (important to not be pickpocketed) but I decided that I was not going to get it. It was time to go back to the bus station so we went back.
The bus to St Fagans (the natural history muesum) was only 3 pounds round trip which is dirt cheap compared to London. We arrived at the museum and bought a map for 30p (but the entrance was free). The "museum" is an open-air musuem with over 40 buildings, animals, etc. and is meant to show you what it would be like to live in Wales in the past. We went to the gardens first and it was absolutely gorgeous. There was a large reflecting pond, some awesome architecture, towers, and a castle that we got to walk through. Then we made our way to the other half that had cottages, little shops, two churches, pigs, cows and a turkey. It is a really hard thing to describe this but I hope you get the idea. It is an old time village you can walk through and we had so much fun. We spent 3 hours there and took lots of picutres. After lots of fun, we were happy to rest our feet on the bus ride back. Since it was only 5 we went back to the store we went to earlier and I bought the purse I had been eying and Kate got the scarf she had been looking at. We walked through the indoor mall and looked at lots of shoes but no one bought anything else.
By 5:30 we were quite hungry so we set out for this vegitarian Indian restaurant Kate had read about on TripAdvisor. I started with a mango soda that had real mango juice in it. It was so tasty! We got the chef's special for 6.25 which is a phenomenol deal! It came with one poppadum, two slices of roti, one samosa, two fried potato things, soup, rice, a curry and a dessert. I got a yogurty soup that was spicy but really well flavored. The samosa was very hefty and well-filled with a spicy bean filling and flaky outside. The curry was not as spicy and also delicious and paired great with the bread that we got. We do not know what the dessert was but it was a bean-paste like texture and tasted kinda almond-y. It was really sugary and a good way to finish the meal. Afterwards, we walked home past all of the clubs and saw many stag and hen parties. They are quite outrageous ordeals, the groomsmen dress up (one group was all wearing golf outfits, complete with one glove), the grooms dress up (one was wearing a slutty flight attendant outfit), and the hen parties were crazy, one group was all wearing camo, and another group was all wearing the slutty halloween outfits you did not know people even wore. It was hilarious to see and we had a great time people watching! We crashed early because we were exhauseted and have a busy day tomorrow at the National Museum and Castle!