May 20-23 - Cardiff, Wales

Cardiff is the capitol of Wales. Wales is a country with its own parliament. In fact, we saw the Parliament building on Sunday morning.

The people of Wales speak Welsh. It is not like English. Here are two good written examples of the difference:



I'm not sure I ever heard Welsh spoken. Everyone who spoke with us spoke in English of course. We did have some good discussions with folks about climate change, the Beatles and music from that era. 

We spent 3 nights in Cardiff. We stayed at a small hotel called Parador44. It was clean, delightful, although lacking a closet. It had the biggest bed that I had slept on all month! We both slept well.



Our first full day was spent in the Cardiff Bay. This is really a fresh water lake. The river is controlled by locks. There are two water taxi companies that travel up and down the river at half hour intervals. The trip was delightful.  Notice the swans on the water, in the photo below.





Our second day, we explored more of the city of Cardiff.  There is a huge soccer stadium a block away from our hotel.  


The Cardiff Castle is maybe 4 blocks away and part of a huge public park.  In the photo below, Steve is enjoying a dish of Pistachio gelato.  Behind him is the entrance to the Cardiff Castle.  This is also a publc way into Bute Park. It was a lovely day, and many folks were enjoying the sunshine in the park.






We returned the next morning to explore the museum, the interior of the Cardiff Castle, the Keep, and other parts of the castle grounds.








This is the view of Cardiff from the top of the Keep.



We left Cardiff the next morning, taking an express bus to the London Airport.  We had reserved a room close to the airport for our morning departure.  For me, this past month was a wonderful trip in the UK with a wide variety of experiences.  For Steve, it was the discovery that yes, he can still travel on his own.  It's more difficult - he has had to change his expectations to take into account that it takes longer to do things than it used to.  But he did it!

At this point more trips are in our future, including Costa Rica in December 2023 and Malta in April 2024.  After that?  Time will tell.  Thank you for reading about our adventure in May 2023.

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