An adventurous trip to Cardiff

Thu, Jun 25th, 2009 - 05:10pm

Cardiff seems like an odd place to go on vacation to, but if you're a geek, a universe of excitement awaits you. As a very big Doctor Who and Torchwood fan, I've been introduced to the city of Cardiff in a few smaller episodes of Doctor Who and eventually down to every detail of it in Torchwood. In the Whoniverse, Cardiff is built on a rift in time in space, which the Doctor can use to fuel his Tardis, but which also causes lots of aliens and extraterrestrial driftwood to fall through (it's a bit like a Hellmouth). If you're thinking "WTF?!", just watch the shows, you definitely won't regret it ;)

In January I was ruminating about how to spent my vacation days this year, and aside from my visit to Austria, I thought about going somewhere in the UK, maybe Edinburgh or Glasgow (because the flights were cheap). But obviously, as a recent Who nutcase, a place I was really interested in seeing was Cardiff. So it happened that my then-not-but-now-boyfriend, who is also keen on Who, convinced me to visit Cardiff and together we booked a flight and a hostel.

We arrived in Cardiff last Thursday. The impressions are mixed - on one hand, I didn't have very high expectations because I knew that Cardiff doesn't have THAT much to offer for tourists. On the other hand, I was surprised at how crowded the city was on a Thursday afternoon. There were definitely much more people out there on Cardiff's Queen Street than on a Thursday afternoon on Düsseldorf's Schadowstraße. Cardiff is the capital of Wales, and I assume a lot of young people move from the country to the capital, a trend which can be observed in many regions.

Naturally the crowds duplicate on the weekend, when people go out to have a drink. Just like Düsseldorf, Cardiff has a "longest bar of the world" of it's own - there are several streets with one bar next to the other. Though Cardiff has such a night life to offer, we didn't actually go out at night because we were much too exhausted from walking all day long. We planned to check out Cardiff's only metal disco on Saturday, but once we arrived at the hostel at 7pm for a small break, we totally fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Aside from it's vibrant night- and shopping life, Cardiff's supply of culture is somewhat limited. There are only ~2 museums; the National Museum of Wales and the Welch Regiment Museum in Cardiff Castle. The National Museum makes up for this lack of museums with several exciting exhibitions. Aside from your usual art galleries, there's also a walkthrough of the Evolution of Wales, back from the bang 4.6 billion years ago complete with Dinosaurs and stuff, to present day Wales. The Castle is the most prominent attraction of Cardiff, sitting dominantly right across the city center. We were lucky to have been there during a special joust event and saw live horseback knight fight thingies.

Other attractions include the beautiful Central Market, the (IMO ugly) Millennium Stadium, the many cute little shopping arcades and Cardiff Bay with the impressive(!) Millenium Center, the water tower, and the boardwalk at Mermaid Quay. Also located in the bay is the Doctor Who Exhibition of clothing and artifacts from time and space ;)

There's more to see outside of Cardiff. The Museum of Welsh Life is being recommend by everyone (probably because it's one of the very few museums around), but I wasn't really interested in another one of those after Skansen and 4x Detmold. Instead, we went on a guided bus tour through the South. First stop was the Big Pit Mining Museum, including a guided tour of the mine itself. It's a bit creepy down there, especially when the ceilings get lower. Second stop was the Brecon Beacons National Park with lots of pretty mountains to admire, but that's about it. And finally the last stop was at Caerphilly Castle, the biggest castle in Wales - with Wales' very own Pisa-esque Tower.

You can find out every detail of my journey in my travel diary on dailyfratze:

All in all, Cardiff is a great place to visit for a short trip. Three days will be more than enough to see everything there is to see. If you stay longer, the risk of feeling bored increases, but that also depends on how much motivation you have left after 3-5 of walking around all day. If you're a Torchwood fan it's definitely worth it; it's fun walking around the city saying "OMG that's where Tosh/Gwen/Owen/Ianto/Jack [insert activity here]!!!" and it also adds a previously unknown depth to the Whoniverse. Once I'll get to watch Torchwood again, I'll most definitely be able to say "OMG I've walked down there/seen that/etc and there's this-n-that around the corner!"

The people of Cardiff seemed more relaxed than the Germans, but not necessarily friendlier. The majority of waiters or cashiers were cold and uncaring, but maybe they just detected foreigners in us. Two young female cashiers were very nice though when I picked out food or articles which they thought were awesome and wanted to have as well immediately.

Aside from the Welsh taciturnity, I absolutely loved being there because everything is in English! Awesome! Germany is so overrun with silly Anglicisms which don't make sense, but also with horrible translations (e.g. dubbing). That's why I always prefer the original, wherever possible (movies, books, computer programs, you name it)... so having been in an English-speaking again country was lovely. Wales is bilingual, so you actually get another language on top. Welsh is pretty weird, but once you've figured out the pronunciation, reading words like "Bwlch" becomes less of a task.

Cardiff is not the easiest of places to get to. Only a few airlines fly to Cardiff airport, one of them is KLM. We flew with KLM via Amsterdam. Another option would be to fly to Bristol and then take the train to Cardiff, which we considered at first. In fact, I would recommend combining your visit to Cardiff with a visit to either Bristol or North Wales and Snowdonia. I've been to neither, but from what I've picked up, a lot of people do that.

Flying from Cardiff to Amsterdam was fun. We flew directly over London, and I was amazed at how tiny England is! I could actually see the English channel from right over London! I always thought London was much further away from the coast, but it's all so cute and tiny ;)

There are several gigabytes of photos we took in Wales. I've picked out the best 136 and uploaded them in my gallery. Feel free to browse through (as always, I recommend using the lightbox so you can read the captions).