Chapter Nine

Wales! I've been meaning to go to Wales for some time after watching a lot of Doctor Who. The first two seasons are (kinda) set in Cardiff. We took an afternoon bus from Birmingham directly to the Cardiff bus station. We were definitely craving lunch so we walked towards one of Cardiff's best known areas - arcades! Now when I think of arcades I think of games, loud noises, and black lighting. In the UK arcades are actually covered shopping streets. I guess because of all the rain they get its easier to have these types of places covered. I tried what's known as Welsh rarebit, which as far as I could tell was toast with different types of cheeses on it. After that we headed down towards the Millennium Center one of Cardiffs biggest attractions! I definitely had fun taking pictures in front of it because of the Doctor Who association of course. We continued down Roald Dahl Plass which is named after Roald Dahl, the author! Born in Cardiff he wrote some of the most famous stories including Charlie and the Chocolate factory and Matilda.

We walked along the Cardiff Bay for a little while before it got a little late and made our way back into the city and towards Alexandra gardens. It was a really quaint park

and had some interesting monuments that we walked around.

The next morning we hiked up to see the Llandaff Cathedral. It was absolutely magnificent from the outside and definitely one of the bigger cathedrals that I had ever seen. As it was a Sunday we didn't want to interrupt service, so we walked around the outside of the building to take it all in.

After the cathedral we headed back into town to go see Cardiff castle! One thing about this trip that I've loved so far is all the castles here, each one is so different and unique I love getting to explore them. Cardiff castle was originally a Roman fort and was founded around the 50s AD. We started with the old fort in the middle, then walked through to the apartments which were absolutely stunning! The view from the top of the fort had to be my absolute favourite though, the view of the city was amazing. Then we ventured into the walls of the

castle which were used as bomb shelters for the people of Cardiff in World War 2.

After almost 3 hours at the castle we headed to the National Museum of Cardiff which was so huge we barely had time to explore just one section of it! We ended up checking out the natural history section to trace Wales' history from the big bang until modern times.

Unfortunately after that we had to head back to Birmingham so we left the museum and headed back to the Cardiff bus station!