A Quick Welsh Weekend Away in Cardiff

Now that we have an official end date, Aaron and I are cramming a lot of trips into these last few weeks. We hadn't made it to Wales yet, so two weekends ago we did a quick overnight trip to the largest city in Wales... Cardiff.

It's only 3 hours by train, so we headed out on Saturday mid-morning. We arrived in the afternoon and checked into our hostel. Yes, there was an s in that word. Since Aaron has never stayed in a hostel before, I had to introduce him to the young, penny-pinching traveling backpacker life. "But we're old," he says. We haven't even hit 30 yet! : )

It was a nice hostel though. We had a private room on the top floor overlooking the castle. Once we checked in, we immediately headed to the castle which is what I was most excited to see.

We've now seen our fair share of castles. And while they usually have a lot of similarities, they are all different. Cardiff castle had stately apartments inside it which is where the kings and queens used to live. There was an exhibition below the visitors center about the Wales infantry, and we saw one of the only American flags to be captured (which happened during the War of 1812 by the Royal Welch). In the middle of the castle was the motte and shell keep, so we climbed all the way to the top for a view over the city. It started raining pretty hard at that point, so we hurried down and ducked into the WWII bunkers. During the war, Cardiff Castle was used as a shelter for the locals during bombing.

Next we headed to afternoon tea. Scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam accompanied by tea are my favorite British food and beverage - YUM! The tea shop was located in one of the many arcades that are in Wales (no, not the kinds with Cruisin USA video games). These arcades are covered streets with little shops lining the sides. It's like a small, vintage shopping mall if you can imagine that. We perused around a few of the arcades and then headed to have a few pints before dinner at a Tapas restaurant. Brew Dog was our favorite pub that we went to although we checked out a few: Cardiff has a whole area called The Brewery Quarter devoted to just that- breweries and pubs!

The next morning, we woke and headed out to the National Museum Cardiff. It was actually a huge museum with so much to see. There was an exhibition that walked you through Earth's history - beginning with how the continents took shape to life being formed and then onto the dinosaur age (with dinosaur bones), the Ice Age (with a Wooly Mammoth recreation) and up until present day. There was another section that had all different forms of sea animals (whales, seashells, turtles, etc) and another with plants and land animals. It was very well set-up and actually really neat. Upstairs were paintings including some Monet's.

We headed back to London after that. Like I said, it was a quick trip, but we have to pack them all in now!