Ramblings: October 2012

Anyways, on Tuesday morning Mr. C brought me to the Peterborough train station so I could catch the train to Cardiff, Wales.

Uh huh, that's another country to check off the list.

Cardiff was nice enough, but I have no particular desire to go back there.

Perhaps that is because I got sick there, but that's another story.

They had a big screen and bleachers set up in this square for people to watch the Olympics.
There were a couple of die-hards huddled in their rain coats against the drizzle.

Cardiff Castle was the star attraction while I was in town.

The 3rd Marquess of Bute (same fellow who was responsible for Falkland Palace) spent piles and piles of money on refurbishing it as a holiday home for his family.

Photography was allowed inside (yay!), so I've posted some below.

The Clock Tower.

A pair of rather bedraggled looking peacocks.

cute little owl

an even cuter little kestrel

Inside the keep.
It is basically just a shell.
Those holes in the wall are where they shoved beams into it so they could stand on them
and use them as stairs to get higher up the wall.
So even in it's prime, there wasn't much more to the structure than what you see here.

Graffiti!
I wonder how old it is?
Imagine it actually came from the Normans?
How cool would that be?

The new part of the castle/palace... whatever you want to call it.
The part that Mr. 3rd Marquess of Bute refurbished.

Spiral staircase.

Fancy buildings in the distance

The guardroom thingy that I was in earlier.
The thing in the middle was a fire place.

Trebuchet
It reminds me of Age of Empires.

The ceiling of the "winter smoking room."

The nursery, with fairytales illustrated along the top of the wall.

Ceiling of the Arab Room

Banquet hall

Mantle-piece depicting Sir Robert going off to fight for Mathilda's right to the throne of England.

More crazy ceilings.
This one is from a bedroom, if I remember correctly.

Ensuite sink

Roman-style rooftop garden
There would have been hanging baskets and plants in the metal boxes.

Dining room
The hole in the table isn't for an umbrella, but for a grape vine.
They would pull the table apart, put a live potted vine in, and then pick grapes directly off the vine.

Library <3

The old Norman keep with the rebuilt Roman wall and gate in the background.

Inside the Roman Wall.
It's not actually an authentic Roman wall, but the remains of a wall were discovered when the castle grounds were being "improved" and were then rebuilt as they imagined they would have looked like.

During WWII, the people of Cardiff took shelter from the bombings inside the Roman wall.
This was a canteen.

It was creepy in this part.
There were sirens and the screams of falling bombs and muffled explosions.

When they rebuilt the wall, they outlined the original Roman wall in red bricks.

After the castle, I wandered about Cardiff for a while.

Traveling on your own sucks.

Not only are you on your own in a strange place,

but there is no one to share in the experience with you.

That being said, Cardiff was a nice city to be in.

Yay Olympics!

Cardiff had loads of these cute little arcades.

A raspberry red building :)

I wandered back down to the castle.

Next to it is Bute Park and Arboretum.

The wall around the park had loads of these stone animals climbing over it.

Many of them had rather anxious expressions on their faces,

as if they were clinging to the wall for dear life.

These are two of my favorites (or just the ones that turned out alright).

Coons :)

There were stone circles like this in various places around Cardiff.

Back at the hostel, I met a guy from Germany named Michi(?), [mixi] in IPA,

and a guy named Mark from London, with a Cockney accent :)

We went for a walk down to the harbour.

The Cardiff Opera House
"In These Stones Horizons Sing"

Well, congratulations on making it this far!
Once again, a post has turned out to be a lot longer than I expected.

There are no pictures from the Wednesday because I got sick somehow.
I suspect dirty cutlery from the hostel.... hmmm.

Anyways, with a sore throat, an aching back and a pounding head,
I dragged myself off to the Cardiff Museum.
The thing that stands out the most for me from there is a massive shark with a mouth like a cave suspended from the ceiling. Jonah's fish!
I had hoped to go back to the Harbour and see it in the daylight, but wasn't feeling up to it.
Soon after lunch, I caught the train to Bath, found my hostel, and slept for the rest of the day.

Which brings us to Thursday!

Bath is a lovely city.
It's also something of a Jane Austen pilgrimage destination.

Pulteney Bridge

The first stop on the agenda (which I made up as I went along) was Bath Abbey.

First built in the time of the Saxons, this was where the first king of England, Edgar, was crowned.

Obviously, it was rebuilt much later in a more modern style.

Inside Bath Abbey

Memorials covered the walls.

Elegant ceiling!

The Abbey.

Just around the corner from the Abbey are the Roman Baths, built in honour of Sulis Minerva.

Sulis was a goddess worshiped by the native tribes in Britain.

The Romans combined her with their goddess, Minerva (a.k.a. Athena), in order to slowly infiltrate the native culture.
This was one of my favourite parts of Bath.

The main pool.
This would have had a huge domed roof over it, making it a very impressive building, especially at the time.
Now that the roof is gone, however, the water has turned a rather murky green.
Looks like pea soup.

A row of Roman emperors over look the pool.

An Emperor with Bath Abbey in the background.

This is the hot spring.
These baths are unique because they are the only one built by the Romans in Britain on a natural hot spring.
This was the "holy of holies", so to speak, of the baths/temple.

Curses
Curses are little notes to the goddess, asking her to punish those who wronged the writer in some way.

Sulis Minerva

Stacks of coins found in the hot spring.
They were thrown in as offerings.

Hotspring drain.

This was a sauna, or something like that.
There used to be a floor over these columns.
Steam would flow around the columns, heating the floor and the room above it.

The Pump Room!
It is now what looks like a pretty fancy restaurant, so I didn't feel like I could just waltz in and take pictures.

A fine example of the Neoclassical Palladian architecture that was so favoured by the Georgians in Bath.
*adjusts monocle and twirls mustache*

There was a street market further down there.
Which reminds me - I totally forgot to go back and get that dress!
Shucks.

Next I made my way up to the Jane Austen Centre where I bumped into Michaela (I have no idea how to spell her name - McKayla? Mikayla?), a girl I met in the hostel the night before.

I couldn't resist.

In the Regency Tearoom on the top floor of the JACentre.
Photo courtesy of Michaela/Mikayla/etc.
We were both glad of the company for lunch, because we agreed that having meals alone was the worst part of traveling alone.

On the wall above our table :3

25 Gay Street, a few houses up from the JA Centre, where Jane lived for a time.
It's now a dental office.

The Circus.
It was built to look like Coliseum in Rome, except that the outside of the circle is now on the inside.
If that makes sense.

The Assembly Rooms!
This is where everyone gathered to see and be seen and to dance or play cards, depending on their preferences and whether they were looking for a spouse or not.

The Fashion Museum is housed inside the Assembly Rooms.

In the actual museum, photography wasn't allowed.

It was cool to see how styles have evolved over the centuries.

However, in the Ballroom they had an exhibit of costumes worn by royal characters

on screen and on stage.

To be honest, I don't remember who was supposed to have worn what, but I think you'll recognize some of them.

I was surprised to learn that only the green gown on the left was worn by a woman.
I mean, don't you think that at least the metally one has quite an hourglass figure?