WE in Wales:
Sunday
Mediterranee,
mediterrannee
My friends L.,
Y., E. , his sister C. and I went to visit Wales the last
weekend. Herein, is the description of our trip from the notes I have been
taking.
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Even without E.'s
snoring, I woke up first, it was around 8. Like usual. As it has been decided before going to
bed, I woke up everybody. I went into the
living room and breakfasted with a tea bag I had stolen from the scout. I had a very bad
night due to acid reflux, so I preferred staying on a liquid diet. Snow was
shining everywhere under a perfect blue sky. The breakfast finished, we took a shower and packed our stuff in the car (I realized
later once again that I had forget my shampoo, i just keep buying and losing
it... ) and we drove away from Pycwn and
its beautiful shore.
We
aimed toward the National botanic garden of Wales. There was a substantial
season discount, thinking about it few flowers are really blossoming in winter. Fortunately,
one of the main attraction consist in the dome that contain Mediterranean flora.
As a Mediterranean indigene, I was really surprised to see that so many
different places worldwide have Mediterranean type weather (California, South-Africa,
Chili, south Australia and of course Mediterranean). It was enjoyable, but it
was missing one things, the smell of dry. Let me explain, dryness enhance the flagrance
of plants. Under the wet climate of England, plants have no smell compared to my home. And
in this 25oC monitored atmosphere with a really high density of
plants, there was not that much smell. However, it was really relaxing, there
were people and while
I was walking around, I have a try to Hemp seed oil, not fantastic but it was
all right. After we watched a really crappy movie about flora in the world in
360o and we went back to the car,
direction Cardiff.
I
don't remember the car journey because I was sleeping all the time, but when we
arrived in Cardiff, we were surprised by the number of bus and limousines
parked in the city centre. We found a parking and cross the city centre We
had a pizza at Bella Italia before going to the castle of Cardiff.. As you
can more or less guess from the picture, the outside looks very good, the walls
are actually protecting the old keep that is almost totally destroyed, but is a
genuine middle age castle. Visiting the inside is another history. Actually, the
whole inside has been designed and built much later. We did the tour with a
guide speaking with a nice and strong welsh accent. Thinking of the castle, it
is at least kitsch, sometime very nice (the Arabic room) and sometime very gay
(the lounge in particular), but it is definitively worth the visit. The castle
is very close to the new Cardiff stadium, and during the visit we couldn't help
noticing the big flux of football supporters coming from the stadium. I guess it
was full, because when we were outside there was still people every where. We
actually get the confirmation by being stuck for 45 minutes on the first 10
miles of motorway on our way home. We decided to go back to Cardiff and went
on of the old dock to find something to eat. We find a nice pub called the
Terra Nova. After dinner, we went home driving on roads empty. I slept all
along. I arrived home at 12:30. I wrote some notes before going to bed.
In conclusion,
I have to say that I appreciate England, but I don't like it very much. Since I
have been a few days in Scotland and now in Wales, and realise the really
fantastic places showing such a wild and beautiful variety of landscape
and nature, with mountains, forests and lakes entangled.
I would
really like to go again there and I strongly recommend it to people that travel
in England to enjoy a little trip in either Scotland or Wales.
The picture on
this post haven't been taken during the trip, I had chosen them from internet by
courtesy of the original photograph.
Pictures
Botanic
garden of wales
Cardiff
castle picture
Map
Map
from LonelyPlanet.com
Misc
Garden
of Wales
http://www.cardiff.gov.uk/
Cardiff
castle Keep
Cardiff
castle official website
England
and Wales Youth Hostels web page