Day 3- October 16th

Wake up call for today is 7am, breakfast and bags out at 7:45am, on the coach at 8:45am. I didn’t sleep well last night and I was awake at 6am. Breakfast was pretty good. I had some fruit, yogurt, toast, and sausage with some juice. A lot of other choices were available. I sat with Matt and Renee for breakfast. They are also from Australia, and probably mid-twenties. They had just done a 31 day tour of Europe with Contiki and then spent 8 days in London before this trip. They’ve been pretty quiet, staying to themselves, and sitting in the back of the bus. People pretty much sat in the same place on the bus today that they sat in yesterday. It had rained all night and it was still drizzling a bit as we drove out to Plymouth Harbor. The traffic was bad, but Doug told us that Andy is from Plymouth and knows side streets and pretty soon we get to the harbor. We had 40 minutes to walk around, which with the weather being crappy was plenty of time. I took some photos of the Mayflower steps and of the harbor and then wandered through one of the stores there. I got some postcards, a pirate magnet for Justin, and a pamphlet with a listing of all the passengers aboard the Mayflower. Back on the bus- we’re headed to Glastonbury. Along the way, Doug gave us some history on the Plymouth area, especially about Sir Francis Drake. Once we left the Plymouth area, Doug talked about the legends about Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur. We arrived at Glastonbury, this is also our lunch stop. We had one hour. I went to the abbey which were fairly ruined but absolutely gorgeous nonetheless. Ran into Eddy there and we walked around together, taking photos. I took the first of many photos of him with his camera. It started to rain so I headed back inside and browsed the gift shop, bought the usual postcards. I skipped lunch to walk around the town a bit. I meandered through some shops in town. They had quiet a few of shops centered around magic, myth, etc. Back on the bus at 1pm to head to Bath. I’m very excited to see the Roman baths. Doug gave a lecture about the history of Bath and the Georgian architecture there. Bath is an absolutely beautiful place. We drove around the city itself, it would be great to come back and explore it another time. We were dropped off at Bath Abbey where Doug described some of the design to us. I took some photos but didn’t go in because I wanted to see the Roman baths instead. It costs £10.25 to get in to the baths, but it was well worth it. You get an audio guide which looked like a giant phone receiver. You choose your language and then punch in the number that’s posted next to whatever it is you’re looking at. The baths are simply amazing. At the bottom there is a huge pool-sized bath. It steams and bubbles and is a greenish color. I took a ton of photos of the bath, the statues, and the artifacts on display. I bought postcards of the city since I wasn’t able to take photos of it from the coach and an ornament of Pulteney Bridge, which is a bridge in Bath that looks like Rialto bridge. I also got a book on how the Roman baths were built. My further wanderings led me to a fudge shop. I bought a slice for my birthday tomorrow. It was raining quite a bit now so I just kept wandering through different shops to try to keep dry. I found a group of fellow tourmates, we located the bus and got on a few minutes early. We are off to Cardiff. Our hotel is the Park Inn. It’s located a bit outside of the city center. I get the single room to myself for the next 2 nights. Tonight we are doing the Welsh Evening optional. I did some clothes washing and wrote some postcards. Only 8 of us were going- myself, Matt & Renee, Eddy, Jeanette, Kellie, and 2 Australian women who were traveling together whose names I didn’t know at the time (they were Niki and Gloria). The dinner was held at Cardiff Castle. This castle was rebuilt in the 1800’s by the Marquess of Butte. It was designed by William Burgess. When we arrived we had a tour of a few rooms of the castle. The first room we went to was in the clock tower and was used as the gentleman’s smoking room. The designs of the rooms were incredibly intricate and most had a theme. The theme of this room was time. The very top of the ceiling had a carved sun and the chandelier came down from it. On the ceiling around the sun were 8 of the zodiac symbols. On the 4 walls were scenes depicting activities of the 4 seasons and each wall had one of the remaining 4 zodiac symbols. In each corner of the room was an angel holding the sun at different levels with one of them turned around so as to be black to depict night. The next room we visited was the ladies parlor. The theme here was Arabic, a play on the fact that there would be many women in the room like a harem. The floor was Italian marble, the fireplace was a pretty green Irish marble. The ceiling was very ornately carved and there were lots of parrots painted and carved in the room. Next, we went into the library. On the walls, every foot or so, there was a painting of a man holding a sign with a famous writer’s name. On either side of the fireplace were Shakespeare and Moliere. The wood bookcases and desks were beautiful! The real books aren’t kept there anymore; instead the bookcases are used to hole the archived minutes of the Cardiff city council. Next we are off to the banquet hall which is still used for functions performed by the Prince of Wales and for other important dinners. The ceilings have the coats of arms to show the family’s history. More than half the room was covered in scaffolding, however, so we couldn’t see most of it. From here we were steered into a room with a bar to wait for dinner. There was one other group at dinner, but it was much larger than ours. It was some sort of group of people from all over the world and from different generations who were attending some sort of conference together. The host came into the room and right away started with the jokes. He was pretty funny. He started asking where everyone was from. I heard Norway, France, Australia, Germany, Ukraine, Spain. I was the only one from the U.S.! We moved into a long room where there were tables that sat perpendicular to the stage. There was a harpist on the stage; she played most of the evening. On the table were carafes of water, white wine, and red wine. The first course was brought out to us. It was seaweed! It wasn’t seaweed like I thought of, like with sushi. It was sort of ground up, mixed with a vinaigrette dressing, and wrapped in bacon (not like American bacon, more like Canadian bacon). I am not an adventurous eater, but I tried it anyway. It was delicious! The next course was a sort of stew with lamb and vegetables. I heard it pronounced as cowl, but I have no idea how it’s really spelled. I’m not fond of lamb OR vegetables so I sort of just had some of the broth. Before the main course was served, the funny host guy started a group song. He first told it as a story and then started to pick people from the audience to play certain parts. A lady from Norway was chosen to be like a skier and say “swish swish” when pointed at. Matt, from our table, was chosen to be a bear and make his hands into claws saying “rawr rawr” when pointed at. A French guy was chosen to a dog and had to bark “woof woof” when pointed at. A French girl was chosen to blow kisses and say “mwah mwah” when pointed at. Lastly, an older gentleman from Norway was chosen to be the French girl’s father, make his hand into a gun and say “bang bang” when pointed at. Then they sang the song and during the chorus would point at each person in turn. It was pretty funny. The main course was chicken with a lovely sauce you could pour onto it. The chicken was very tender, you didn’t even need a knife to cut it. They also put bowls of potatoes and vegetables on the table. There was more song and dance and then the dessert was served. It was a sort of lemon mousse with a raspberry sauce. When describing the optionals, Doug had told us that the Welsh evening is usually enjoyed the most. I have to agree, it was a wonderful evening. We got back to the hotel about 10:30pm. It had been a long but fantastic day.

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