Stocks are good? Beds are so much better!

This was a very aimless day.  We didn't plan on going to Cardiff Castle, but we ended up there.  It was also a very relaxing day, for the  most part. 

We got to Cardiff nice and early around 9 and happened to notice there was a castle in town.  Being the castle experts that we are ; ) we decided to check it out.  Turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day. 

Welcome to Cardiff, where everything is in Welsh and in English.

The people in the gift shop must have been very happy as we wandered around in it for a good 20 minutes before the castle opened.  When the castle did open we were the first ones in.  We wandered through an information area where we picked up our audio guide and saw a very artistically creative (aka confusing) video showing the history of the castle.  At the end of the video all we understood was that some battles happened there... sometime.

After the extremely informative video (in which there was no dialogue) we exited the theatre (which did have an amazing sound system and screen!) and toured the air raid tunnels.  These were built by one of the owners of the castle because he enjoyed walking but didn't like walking in the rain.  He just so happened to have plenty of money and could build an underground walkway under the walls of his castle.  Later they were used during WWII for air raid shelters. 

When we exited we found some very nice, comfortable stocks.  : )  And no they weren't padded; they didn't have to be at that point.  They were great just the way they were.  Our backs hadn't recovered from the day before in which we carried our backpacks all day... Any opportunity we had today we took to take our backpacks off and rest our backs. 

It was while in this most comfortable position that we realized that we should head to our tour.   As we headed this way, we saw the "typical" Americans our English Mum had warned us about heading toward the tour too. She had told us "typical" Americans were loud and overweight, wore checked shirts and wore multiple cameras around their necks.  The father of this family we noticed, unfortunately fit this description to a "T."  Even worse were their childish attitudes toward their children.  The children would have been bearable on the tour; the parents, most definitely not.  We sat there debating (not for long at all) what to do.  Could we change the tour to the next time?  Yes. 

This is what we call rapid cloud movement- Sun to rain

Changing our tour time gave us another hour time for exploring and eating lunch.  We did both.  The lunch took place under a nice tree.  The exploring took us up into the central tower fortress and onto the walls.  Both offered great views of the rest of the castle.  By the time we were done in the tower fortress it was time to head to our "second" tour time.  We breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of bratty adults or children. 

Our tour guide was one of the best we have had yet!  He took us through the rooms in the clock tower side of the castle.  Every room was ridiculously elaborate.  The first room was decked out in time related symbolism, ranging from months of the year to signs of the zodiac to depictions of the gods the days of week are named after.  The duke who made the castle into a residence was very well educated and was fluent in 15-20 languages and made sure his children had a good start as well by hiring governesses from different countries all who spoke to the children in their native languages only.  Thus each of his four children knew 5 languages by the time he or she was 10. 

His dining hall was so elaborately and beautifully created that it is still used by UK dignitaries today.  It can also be rented out for wedding receptions for the maximum of three hours at the nominal rate of £1500 per hour.  No problem. 

Two other rooms were quite interesting because he was learning a couple languages at the time he was building them.  His napping room was decorated in the Greek language and had stained glass windows of the 7 churches referred to in Revelation.  One floor up from that was his outdoor covered porch.  The details of this room included Hebrew writings (since he was learning it at the time) and the stories of Elijah as well as one of the few statues of a smiling Madonna.  The tour ended in his library which was a feast for book lovers! 

The window depicting the goddess from whom we get our day of the week Friday 

The dining hall

We concluded our time at the castle with a rain shower and a short tour of the aforementioned tunnels.  We decided to head home sooner so we could a) get our backpacks off our backs and b) pack for our trip to Scotland the next day.  So we headed out and grabbed a bit to eat at a Cornish pasty shop.  These pasties are one of the best British foods we have eaten! 

Scenery on the train trip home

More coming on Scotland sometime. 

-Jeanette and Chelsea

Watching trains is good... Catching them is better.

A two-coach train pulls out of the station where two girls sit waiting for a train.

"That was our train."

"Really?"

"Yeah.  Well?  Lunch?"

Well those two girls just so happened to be two very tired girls who had spent the morning at Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and Salisbury Cathedral.  But we had to keep going to Bath so we could find a place to stay the night; other than on the street.  So, instead of eating on the train on our way to Bath, we had a lovely hour to eat lunch and laugh about our silly mistake in the Salisbury rail station.  When the next train came in we actually got on!  ; )

Arriving in Bath, we made straight for the tourist information centre in the train station to ask about accommodation for the night.  We found a grand Bed and Breakfast, that actually seemed more like a hotel.  We were pretty excited about booking our first hotel/B&B room by ourselves :) It was a very cute little room with two beds, a really big fireplace and our own bathroom!  We dumped our bags (very gladly) and went off galavanting!  Only problem, everything was closing and we were exhausted.

The Street of Bath

Outside of our B&B

We planned to go to the Fashion Museum that was showing British Costume Design from the Academy Awards, but it closed before we could get there, so instead we went to the Jane Austen Centre.  It is in a small building and the tour begins on the second floor with a introduction to the Austen family.   I enjoyed hearing that bit, since I didn't know that much about Jane's family.  The museum continued on the ground floor with displays showing some of the things of daily life during Jane's time in Bath.  I was a little disappointed though, because as I understood there were supposed to be costumes from some of the Jane Austen films but that turned out to be false.   : (

Entrance to the Centre

One of the few dresses on display

A letter from Jane to her sister Cassandra

After getting kicked out of the Jane Austen Centre at closing time, we went to the Roman Baths.  These are one of the only hot springs in England and was discovered and well used from Roman times!  It was an interesting museum, beautiful baths that made us both sleepy (of course maybe having already done so much that day had something to do with it too!), and a ton of info that definitely went in one eye and out the other. Apparently, there was also a temple built in conjunction with the baths (built around 63 AD), that was a worship center for a goddess, possibly related to the weather or the sun. 

The English people love flowers and display them in a variety of ways

The dome of the building entering the Roman Baths

Pieces from the original temple face

The goddess

After that, we headed back to the B&B to grab some dinner from the adjoining bar/restaurant, but when we asked at the bar for a menu, we were met with a slightly blank stare then a "Well, we actually don't serve food right now..." Nice. So we headed across the street on a recommendation, in search of fish and chips. We got the fish and chips, but not before waiting a considerable amount of time for someone to come take our order, then suddenly figuring out that they weren't going to, because we had to go up to the bar and order. Yeah, that was a really long day. We ate and went back to our room and figured out how to get to our next destination: Cardiff, Wales.

Walking back to our B&B we were reminded that "Water is Best"

Beautiful sunset ending the day

-Jeanette

[Sorry for the lack of posts, as always, we promise we'll get more up soon, but don't expect another post for at least 2 weeks... ; )]