Exploring Wales

I've been wanting to visit Wales for a long time, and when half-term gave us 11 days off on row it was an opportunity we couldn't miss, and Mari, Gemma (Mari's room mate) and me set off to Wales. Because it was half-term we had trouble finding a place to stay in Cardiff and we had to cut down on the nights there so we only had one and half day. However, we managed to see quite a lot of the city in that time:

The Castle
- really impressive, quite big compared to other castles I've seen.




Cardiff Bay
- a beautiful area just outside of the city centre with lots of restaurants and cafes, some shops and some very interesting architecture including the Welsh Parliament and the Norwegian Church


The Welsh Parliament

Cardiff is definitely a place that is worth going back to! And it isn't really far away from Warminster at all, only 2 hours on the train and you're in the middle of the city centre.

After a couple of great days in Cardiff we went further west to Swansea where we had managed to book four nights at a lovely hotel. We had a big room and it was nice and clean (except for a GIGANTIC spider on the last day) with refills of bisquits every day, which was brilliant since having coffee and eating bisquits as we were watching Home and Away became a daily ritual! Breakfast was really good as well, with lots of choices and laaarge portions.

The first day we went to the beach in the city, and we found some beautiful appartments that I could definitely see myself living in. The view was amazing! And the area close to it was different in a way. From the beach we reached the Dylan Thomas Centre that we had set out to see, and the display was really good. Not too much information, but just enough to teach you something and trigger your enthusiasm for his writing. When we were there the Dylan Thomas Festival was on, and we got to attend a reading of his poems by Cerys Matthews, former singer in Catatonia. It was a fabulous experience, I was listening as if I was spellbound.. What a beautiful voice and such a good reader of poems!

Seeing as the majority of the group were Norwegians we obviously had to go for a hike. We chose the beautiful beaches on the Gower Peninsula and a walk that didn't seem too challenging. We had a great day out and saw beautiful beaches and landscape I have never seen the likes of. The cliffs were maybe not as impressive as in Ireland as they were not as steep, but they were beautiful in a different way. We ended up walking the whole day, crossing four beaches, and that last beach I almost thought we would never reach the end of! But when we finally got there a tasty lunch and a dark chocolate cake was waiting for us, and made the wait worth it.




The kind of English gentleman we're looking for...


This beach was voted Britain's most beautiful beach

The next day a nice Welshman took us to see another beautiful beach, Rhossilli beach. We got to see the sun set on a cloudy sky, and by the time we reached the Mumbles it was dark. But we got to see the pier and the promenade, and we were very well satisfied as this was what we had set out to see this day.



Nights were spent in restaurants enjoying delicious meals. We kept a very international diet, ranging from Italian to American to Spanish. Since we spent so much time walking we could spoil ourselves a bit, and quite a few desserts were digested as well, among them of course a couple of chocolate cakes! We didn't do very well on trying the Welsh diet, but we did manage to get a taste of the Welsh cakes on our last day there who turned out to be quite good, rather similar to some sorts of lefse, I think it's the Nordlandslefse I'm thinking off, but with raisins in it.

When we left the hotel the last day we were tempted to have spent the extra night that they thought we had booked, because we really had had a great time in Swansea. But we had other things to see and do this weekend, but when we split up we all agreed that this should be repeated at a later point! I'm looking forward to the Christmas party girls!