December 7, 2022
I don't know why I didn't write about this at the time, I was still writing once in a great while. Maybe I figured I'd take care of it when I went through my pictures and then never did. Kinda wish I had, it's tough to remember this stuff nine years after the fact with just a bunch of un-captioned pictures to go from.
Part of the point of the trip was to get me together with a friend of a friend that lived in Cardiff. The more time she spent around me the less interested she got. So, fair enough. The most she's guilty of is taking longer than most to get to that point. At least I got a vacation out of it.
Flight to UK, December 15
I drove up to Ohio with Ginger on the 14th to drop her off with Mom. Then I flew from Akron-Canton to Atlanta to catch my flight to Heathrow. All I remember from that is, Hartsfield-Jackson is a big airport.
We checked into a hotel near the Gloucester Road station, where we each had a "galley room" if I remember the term right. A glorified walk-in closet: the bed was longways relative to the room, with a small desk opposite. The bathroom was barely wider than the bed, and there was a small window between the bed and the desk. I would not recommend that for couples.
Bus Tour & Tower of London, December 16
Since the hotel was in the touristy part of town it was easy to get one of those on-off bus tours of the area. We drove around Hyde Park and a few other things that I wish I could remember in the Kensington area before going into Westminster and seeing the Houses of Parliament. We didn't take the tour there, but did go to the Tower of London. Lots of interesting old stuff there that I wish I had better memories (and pictures) of.
I think that's the evening we caught the last of the day's tour buses to try to get back to the hotel but found out it was terminating near Piccadilly Circus. I know we wound up taking the Tube back to the hotel but I can't remember whether it was the actual Piccadilly Circus stop or something nearby.
London Eye, December 17
I can't remember why this took all day. But we went up the big-ass Ferris wheel and I took pictures. Not much more to say, really.
Bath, December 18
On the way to Cardiff, the base of operations for the second half of the week, we stopped off at Bath to see their Christmas village or something like that. Which they had closed the week before, well before Christmas. Not really getting the logic there.
Bath does have one of those neat old bridges where there are shops built onto each side of the street, so it doesn't even really look like you're on a bridge at all. If you don't pay attention to the shops getting smaller front-to-back you might not know you're on a bridge at all.
There's an art gallery there, a few blocks up from the center of town. We ducked in there to check it out and get out of the rain (a common theme for the week). I'm sure I used to know more about who created it and why.
Cardiff Castle/Castell Caerdydd, December 19
The castle itself is showing its age, but it has some cool stuff in it. An aristocrat of some kind bought it and installed an apartment for his family in one of the walls, sometime in the 1700s I think, so one side of the castle is in much better shape than the rest. And it was used as a bomb shelter during World War II.
As a side note, this is also when I started collecting foreign coins. In addition to normal souvenir stuff like a little stuffed Welsh Dragon that I bought for my niece, it also had that year's coin set from the Royal Mint. I bought myself one, and ever since I've been buying a mint set from every country I've visited.
Barrys Island & Llantwith Major, December 20
We saw these places on a rover ticket on one day. Nothing major there: Barrys is a seaside town that's much nicer in the summer than the middle of December, and Llantwith Major is another neat little town that's been around for quite a while. Just a nice chill day of seeing cool stuff.
Caerphilly Castle/Castell Caerffili, December 21
This was probably my favorite part of the trip. Caerphilly was built by the Normans in the 1200s and was (IIRC) their first castle in Wales. It was pretty heavily damaged during the English Civil War, and over the years it was unused some of its stones were... "diverted" to local construction projects. But there's still quite a bit to see there — more than in Cardiff — and was a great day.
Cardiff Bay, December 22
My last full day in the UK. We went to Cardiff Bay and walked around in a cold, pissing rain for a couple hours. I did get to see the place they film(ed?) Doctor Who at, so that was nice.
Flight to Ohio, December 23
I woke up at some gross hour of the morning and caught a bus back to London. I would up getting to LHR a little bit before everything opened, so me and everyone else on the bus just kind of camped out in the one part of the terminal that was open and napped as we could until everything got rolling an hour or two later.
On the upside I was like third in line to go through the security line so that part was a breeze. On the way back the Canadian Maritimes were in daylight so I got a couple pics of the part of the Appalachians that had the Scottish immigrants to the area naming it "New Scotland".
There was a bit of excitement on the flight back from ATL to CAK. Someone had a potential heart attack, so after the obligatory "is there a doctor on board" and a consultation with air-traffic control, we got the announcement, "ladies and gentlemen, we're beginning our descent into Akron-Canton Airport now". At which point we did a turn/descend combo that was a bit spicier than usual. We all waited while EMS came and got the person off the plane — I never heard what happened to them — and once that was done we all got off the plane and got back to whatever we had planned.
Conclusion
And that's it. Or at least that's all I can remember with any clarity here in 2022. I really wish I'd written down more at the time.
But it was a good vacation, aside from the friend-of-a-friend figuring out that I'm an undatable dumpster fire. But that's not exactly her fault. The whole thing was fairly chill, day-to-day approach. There's a place for planning every last thing, but if I have enough information to make my own decisions I'm happier winging it.
