Cardiff

Here we were, concerned about running into Daleks and Cybermen when apparently it was zombies we had to worry about.

Never mind.  Worry about Daleks.

I'm probably going to say this a lot as the summer progresses, but I could happily stay in Cardiff for the rest of my life.  I'm not kidding.  The pace of this city is so relaxed, you wouldn't know that it was the capital of Wales at all.  Given the choice, I would rather live there than in London.  Unlike some of out other travels, we actually left Southampton in the morning and arrived with a decent amount of daylight left to us in which to explore the area immediately around our hostel and engage in a little of the requisite geekiness that bewhoved (the spelling error is deliberate here) us to make our way down to Roald Dahl Plass and Mermaid Quay for a bit of sightseeing.  We found a nice little restaurant called Bill's the next street over from our hostel and had serious nerd-outs with a waitress named Ellie who could easily have passed for a pin-up.  She was kind enough to tell us where we should go and even how to get there -- we would probably have stayed all night if funds were unlimited and we didn't care about disrupting her work every time she thought of something interesting she wanted to talk about.  This seems to be the nature of most people we've encountered in the British Isles.

Can you guess where this is?  Disregard the tents.

We stayed at the Bunkhouse hostel on St Mary's -- a very short walk from the bus station unless you're carrying large and heavy backpacks -- basically in the centre of the city and within walking distance of most major bus routes.  The rooms were nice and the staff was friendly, but the combination of not being able to connect to the wi-fi in our room and the fact that we weren't allowed to be in the common area after midnight meant that we often had to sit in the hallway until the batteries were used up if we wanted to do things like peruse the websites of various language schools.  The day was for exploring as much as possible and looking for work, so naturally all of this would occur at night.  The fellow responsible for manning the desk on our last couple of nights there is one of those heroes that would otherwise go unsung -- he let us stay in the common area as long as we needed to.  We were quiet and out of the way...and quite frankly I think it must not have been very interesting down there all alone.  I feel bad for never thinking to ask his name.

A pretty lady in a pretty TARDIS

The Norman motte-style shell fort at Cardiff castle.

 Our first full day in Cardiff was spent meandering and doing research into where we wanted to go for work.  We went quite a ways to get to some of these places and even got lost near one in spite of walking right past the school we were looking for.  The second day involved the Dr. Who Experience, and the Everyman production of Sweeney Todd at the Sofia Gardens.  They had a remarkably minimalistic set, but made it work beautifully to suit their purposes.  Our last day was passed just wandering around.  There was some sort of craft festival going on in Cardiff Castle, which meant that we could actually look around a little without being worried about having to pay 12 pounds for a tour.  We couldn't go inside any of the buildings for this reason, but it was still a lovely place to visit for what we could figure out on our own.  We also had a blast over these days wandering the various arcades off St. Mary's -- and by arcades I mean the random side-alleys lined with shops that would sometimes run between buildings from one street to another.  There we made the acquaintance of an entertaining hat salesman named Stu who had a penchant for all things vintage or antique.

Umm...I've read detective stories.  Not sure I'd stay here.

Cardiff Bay: taken from Mermaid Quay

Cardiff Bay