Since it’s been about three and a half months since I went to Cardiff, I thought it might be kind of fun to do a little recap. That way, y’all can look at my pictures, and I can have fun reliving it!

I went with my friend Lauren, and to make the most of our weekend, we decided to leave at about 8:00 on a Friday night, and stay until Monday afternoon (neither of us had Monday classes). We travelled by Megabus, which is a big thing over there, and if I remember correctly, the tickets only cost about 6 pounds round trip! The bus ride there was just a little over two hours, and we ended up getting to our hostel sometime around midnight. Because our transportation ended up being so cheap, we decided to go with one of the nicer hostels in town, called NosDa.

I’d never been to a hostel before, but according to Lauren (who has), NosDa was very nice. It had quite a few common/living rooms, and lots of space to do homework or read or just hang out.

The internet was awful there, which was a bummer for me as I had a research paper to do that weekend. Our room was a 6-bed female only room, and that was probably the worst part of it. The beds were awful (springs literally sticking up out of the mattresses), but the room was pretty spacious. Two of the girls would come in at awful times in the morning after having spent a lot of time at the pubs, and the complain about the rest of us when we “made noise” in the morning. Oh well – it was certainly an interesting life experience 😉

Saturday was spent walking around Cardiff.

It turns out that this can be done in (maximum) two hours, so there was a lot of time we weren’t entirely sure what to do with ourselves. Overall, though, I loved it. Cardiff is the capital of Wales, but it really had a small-town feeling about it. Everyone was very friendly and since it was so close to Christmas time, the overall mood was very happy and warm. There are so many little alleyways, markets and shops to check out. It’s also great because, unlike London or many other cities, the flow of “foot traffic” was quite slow and you could walk at your own pace without feeling like an annoyance to everyone else 🙂

We were lucky to have such great weather, too. It was cold in the morning and at night, of course, but in general, it was quite pleasant. Did you know that Cardiff has more hours of sunlight than Milan, Italy? I thought that was pretty interesting.

For lunch we stopped at an Italian restaurant (I think it was called Bellini’s), where I ordered a salad:

And a pizza. I carried the leftovers around for a bit, but eventually ended up tossing them. It wasn’t the best pizza ever.

After a bit more wandering, I got some gelato.

(I know, pizza and gelato in Wales? Don’t worry, the pub food came Sunday night 😉 )

Saturday also included a visit to the City Hall, which was quite a gorgeous building. It was just a little walk outside of the center of town.

Mountains!

That was pretty much it for Saturday: just some walking around, gift shopping, eating, and relaxing.
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Sunday morning I was in the mood for a workout, so I decided to go for a jog along the river. It was gorgeous, but suuuuper cold, so I ended up paying to use the gym at the hostel.

Lauren and I split up and kind of did our own things for the first part of the day. While she went off for a massage, I decided to take a 5 pound tour of the city. Even though we’d been around it already, I wanted to know more about the history of it. The tour ended up being nice, but sort of awkward: I was the only one on it, and I don’t believe my tour guide had ever heard of a “personal bubble”. And most of the stuff he told me I’d already learned on the internet or on signs and brochures from the day before. But I did end up getting some great pictures!

 But more of those to come in my next recap!