Day 22: Cardiff

I got this email the night before I left for Cardiff.

It made me sad.

Sad that these alerts arrive with an air of weary resignation. Sad that I'd thought it necessary to subscribe to this service before I came abroad. Sad that I feel it is my obligation to be sad, not weary or resigned.

On that cheerful note.

This trip involved more time on a coach or bus than actual time in Cardiff.

I left King's just as the sun rose...

...Arrived in Victoria without too much of a delay...

...And transferred coaches to Cardiff.

Upon waking up from a slight doze, I realized we had, at some point, already crossed the border and arrived in Wales, where freaking forests grow right up against the motorway.

And all the street signs come in two languages.

Honestly, it's as if the Welsh language has a personal vendetta against vowels or something.

From the coach, I hopped on to a local bus, the Baycar, out to, well, the bay.

And.

Yes.

I took so many pictures in here. So many. You wouldn't believe.

It was well worth the six-hour journey, even though being around, alternately, ten-year-olds clutching action figures and middle-aged men clutching action figures made me feel a little... displaced.

IT'S THE FREAKING FACE OF BOE.
THE ACTUAL FREAKING FACE OF BOE.

 There was stuff from just the past season too, and I died about a million little fan-fueled deaths.

Ogling (and frantic souvenir shopping) done, I caught the bus back to the city center (or "centre," as it's spelled 'round here).

I might have thrown up a little in my mouth trying to pronounce this in Welsh.

Because this is Cardiff, of course there is a (reconstructed) 11th-century Norman castle smack in the middle of town.

Cardiff Castle hadn't really been high up on my List of Things to Do in Cardiff that, up until yesterday, had contained one item and one alone, but I had several hours to kill, so I wandered in and just kind of stood and stared a bit.

Having spent my childhood constructing trebuchets out of Tinkertoys and building Fortified Walls in Age of Empires, I thought I had a fairly reliable legit-ness radar when it came to castles and medieval things.

This was legit. Very legit.

From up on the battlements, I could see that this had actually been a proper castle with a keep surrounded by an actual moat and a wide, grassy area.

There was a reconstructed trebuchet standing off to the side, and I squealed internally at the sight of its massive counterweight.

I climbed into the keep, and every bit of my inner Medieval Times-loving self shrieked in wonder.

Arrow slit thingies for the garrison.

A round green place that had probably not been as well-ventilated several hundred years ago.

Steep, twisty stairwells.

(As mentioned previously) An actual moat.

From there, wonders never failed to cease.

I learned that during World War II, the people of Cardiff had tunneled beneath the walls to create air raid shelters, with barrage balloons anchored to the castle itself.

People in Cardiff hid from the Nazis in tunnels built on the remains of a 3rd-century Roman fort.

What even.

The actual remains of said 3rd-century Roman fort, now located opposite the gift shop.

I visited the apartments, where Rich People lived.

If I ever am lucky enough to have a library in my future supervillain lair, I want it to look a little like this:

All around me were these strange, strange contradictions.

I left Cardiff at seven in the evening, got held up in Newport for about a half hour by a screaming lady who tried to get on the bus with an invalid ticket, resulting in the appearance of several cops and a very grouchy coach driver. It was around eleven when I made it back to London, and I arrived in Cambridge at one-thirty Sunday morning to drunk people singing Journey in the pub.

It was oddly comforting.