Day Twenty Eight

October 27

This weekend I went to Wales with Zoya and Vanessa. It was a ton of fun! We left super early on Saturday morning for a five-hour bus ride to Cardiff Wales. We walked around Cardiff City Center for a while. Saw Cardiff castle, which is pretty much amazing. The city center was mostly pubs and clubs and shopping, not a lot of sightseeing opportunities. After we got our fill of the city center we walked about two miles to Cardiff Bay. This is the major tourist attraction of Cardiff.

The bay was beautiful. We could see hills off in the distance across the bay, which was full of sailboats. The atmosphere of the area was wonderful, it was a very laid back sort of feel. We walked all around the bay. The area around the bay is full interesting buildings and artwork depicting events from and scenes of the bay. We stopped at a small market and tried just about everything they had to offer there. We had home made Welsh cakes, home made goat cheese, and homemade fudge. The fudge was also made with goat cheese. We wound up getting a small package of chocolate fudge to share. It was absolutely delicious.

Sometime late in the afternoon we noticed a tugboat pulling a ship into a small inland area used for docking larger ships. It turned out that the tugboat was pulling a navy ship into port. It was really cool. We stayed and watched the ship coming in for about an hour. After that we went in search of dinner. Everything was really expensive so we decided to go to the supermarket. We all bought a baguette and we got some cold pasta and chicken salads to put on the bread. We also got a package of Welsh cakes. The dinner turned out to be very good.

After eating we walked back into the city center and checked bus times. Gareth, who lives across the hall from me, lives very near Cardiff with his brother. He offered his house to us for the weekend and gave us a key. He said his brother should be there and that he would warn his brother we were coming. We decided to take the last train out at 9:15. We called Gareth and he let his friends know when to pick us up from the train station in Pontyclun (where he lives). We bought our train tickets and then wondered around in the nightlife of Cardiff.

There were tons of people out going to the club for the night. We say one large group of people who were apparently going to a Halloween party. All of them were dressed in crazy costumes. We say a Fred Flintstone, Shaggy, Scooby, and a guy dressed in a slutty nurse outfit. We had about an hour until our train so we just walked around the city and took pictures.

We got on the train at 9:15 and it was only a 20 min train ride to Pontyclun. At the train station two of his friends picked us up and drove us to Gareth’s house. His brother was home so we talked with him a lot about our day and he told us a lot about Wales. The village the live in is really small and everyone pretty much knows everyone else. He said he would show us around the village in the morning. We stayed up really late talking about Wales. Vanessa had a lot of questions. We mostly wound up talking about politics It really is a very popular subject here.

On Sunday we got up at nine and left the house around ten to tour Pontyclun. He took us to the local rugby club. This is the main hang out spot in Pontyclun. He said normally on a Sunday morning there would have been two rugby games going on outside and there would be a lot of people there watching. It was pouring rain outside so the place was pretty much abandoned. It was still really cool. There is a lot of rugby history on those walls. They had a picture from the late 1800’s of a famous rugby player.

After the rugby club we went to the local shopping center. We wandered around Borders and a couple clothes shops. I bought the complete works of Shakespeare. It was only six pounds! I couldn’t pass it up. Then he took us back to the train station so we could get back to Cardiff to catch our bus.

We had some time in Cardiff so we went souvenir shopping I bought some postcards. I love postcards and I get them everywhere. We stopped at a pub for lunch and then got on the bus back home. I had a really good time all weekend. It wasn’t a major tourist area and the atmosphere was very laid back and relaxing. It was a nice get away from all the school work in Oxford.