So, pretty much all week we had been saying that yesterday, Saturday, we would travel to Wales and go visit Cardiff. We have discovered our week spot in small to medium-sized planning ahead while in London. We can plan a week-long excursion through Europe but when it came to Wales we were all talk and no ticket-buying. However, after a brain storming session on the way to Bath between Amanda and I, we decided to buy tickets to Cardiff upon our return from Bath. So, bright and early Saturday morning we were on a two hour train to Cardiff. Every time we’ve been on these trains, there have been reserved seats, seats with tickets sticking out basically saying reserved for people who bought tickets for this particular train. For one, we had reserved seats and didn’t have to wander around looking for an empty seat. When we got there, we played the “don’t know how public transport works here, lets just walk” game which worked until later. We walked down to Cardiff Bay, the main purpose being the locating of the Doctor Who exhibition and melting into sublime geek-hood. We wandered around the bay; found the travel centre which looked liked a submarine blimp. They had a bunch of maps, which pointed the way to the exhibition. We walked over, paid £5 to walk through and see all the costumes and props they had. Upon exiting, there was a shop, as always, and I got something for my dad for Christmas, I can’t tell you though, he reads this. We walked all the way back, through the town, past the rail station, to Cardiff Castle, which was utterly fantastic. There’s an outer wall, with a Victorian tack-tastic Medieval-inspired castle. Then in the middle, was the keep, the Norman castle which we climbed to the top of on some very steep stairs. At this point, we decided that we wanted to visit St. Fagans History Museum. On Amanda’s map, it had an arrow that said “this way to St. Fagans”. We walked for a mile, stopped, accidentally, outside of a sex shop, and stopped in at a subway for some water before giving up. Eventually, we discovered the reason that we never found St. Fagans was that it was five miles away. Go figure. At this point, it was about 4:45 and we began to think about dinner. We stopped into a Wetherspoon’s pub where they had a burger and drink special. After our tasty, tasty dinner, I bought expensive batteries and some starburst twists before boarding out train and heading home.

Our first adventure on Sunday turned out to be attempts at pancakes. Tired of toast and cereal everyday, some mix was bought as well as some extremely expensive syrup from Tesco. However, as they were being cooked, it became readily apparent that these did not look like your average pancake; they were too light in color. Upon eating them, it turned out that the English idea of pancake mix makes little, thick, crepes. After that misadventure we scooted on over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We knew we’d be late and there would be a crowd but it was pretty much the only day we could do it. Needless to say there was a decent sized crowd that we navigated pretty well, a lot of the pictures I got were from holding my camera over my head but I got some decent ones. After sitting in what was probably St. James’ park for a while trying to come up with something to do we decided to pop back over to Covent Garden which we had kind of seen when we went to the British Museum and investigate the Jubilee Market which is an enclosed outdoor market? They had lots of interesting stuff and I bought a scarf for myself and Christmas presents for some other people. However, because I had such tremendous foresight to not bring any money with me I had to take out money from an ATM for the first time since I got here. I think it was the whole weekend there had been the Thames Festival, I’m not quite sure what it entailed except that tonight they were doing fireworks. We got out at the tube stop between the two the flyer had suggested getting off at and parked ourselves beside the Thames. We were there pretty much an hour before the fireworks were set to begin so most played cards while the rest of us tried to take up as much space as possible. Eventually, what we guess correctly as being the fireworks barges began to move and everyone got up. The barge moved, and then kept moving, and then stopped right in front of where we were standing. So, we essentially front row for the fireworks show. It was fantastic, almost made up for missing the 4th of July because of work.