On the eve of my 30th birthday, I was feeling adventurous and wanted to "see a new land" (as Grace would say). Without much planning and it being January, our options were a little limited. We settled on heading to Cardiff, Wales since it was close and relatively cheap and easy to get to and just a weekend would be a fine amount of time for a quick visit.
The night before we left we celebrated with presents and chocolate. What more could a girl ask for? Once again, my sweet family spoiled me and we had a great evening.
Early Friday morning we headed to the train station with our 2 backpacks and one large suitcase and buggy ready for adventure. It took 2 1-hour long train rides, but the kids were good and the train was delightful. I love traveling by train because you don't have to use seat belts, you have more leg room than on planes and you don't have to worry about the stress of driving and traffic. On our second leg we even got a table seat for the 4 of us.
After we got in and checked into our hotel, we headed out in search of lunch and adventure. We stopped here for hamburgers, feeling proud of ourselves for choosing something local and not an American chain. How could you mess up a hamburger after all?
Turns out you can really mess it up so badly that even though we were starving we couldn't eat more than half of each of our burgers and we had completely lost our appetites. What we would have given to have just walked another block to the Burger King!
Cardiff has a really great pedestrian shopping district in the middle of town. So cute!
After "lunch" we walked a few blocks to the center of town to Cardiff Castle. It was beautiful and one of my favorite castles we've seen to date! It looked just like the classic castle and the manor house was amazingly decorated!
Inside the walls of the castle
The owners of the castle, the Bute family, allowed the villagers to hunker down within the walls of the castle during bombings during WWII. You can see on the upper left picture the rows of benches and the bunks behind them. I love the propaganda picture in the upper right picture of the kitchen - it reads: Doctor Carrot the children's best friend! Ha! There was also a display of Britain's wars throughout it's history with a place where the kids could dress up.
The above picture above is the exterior of the manor house portion of the castle. As I said, the interior of the manor house was my favorite. It was incredible! Sadly, the girlies were feeling anxious so we didn't have the time we wanted to take it all in, but here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the grandeur.
I spy with my little eye...
After visiting the castle until closing time, we ate dinner at Jamie's (Oliver) Italian and headed back to the hotel. It didn't take long for all 5 of us to be snoring our brains out even if we were squished in a tiny room together.
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