Cardiff

On October 21, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - The United Kingdom3 Comments

On my last trip to the UK, we took a day trip to Cardiff by train out of London’s Paddington Station. This makes Wales my fifteenth country visited! (Not including the US.)

Cardiff is a fascinating little city. We didn’t see even a third of what the city has to offer, but we did take a stroll past this nifty clock down Queen Street.

At the end of the street are the outer walls of Cardiff Castle.

Through the main gate of those outer walls is the original Norman shell keep, flying the flag of Wales.

The red dragon motif is everywhere, as the symbol of Wales. It’s also the symbol of the Brains brewery, which makes a pretty tasty beer. I had a Brains Green Dragon at lunch when we were back in London later in the trip, and I wish I’d had a Brains while we were closer to the brewery- I’ve been told that the flavor loses something in transit.

Our goal for this jaunt to Cardiff was actually in Cardiff Bay. From the Cardiff central station, we took a small local train to Queen Street a few stops from the main station, then changed to the smallest train ever to go to Cardiff Bay. Seriously, it’s only got the one wagon and it just goes back and forth between Queen Street and Cardiff Bay.

From Cardiff Bay’s little train station, it’s a short walk to the Bay. You’ll pass the very pretty Pierhead building.

…and you’ll walk past the Wales Millennium Center. If you watched Torchwood, this will look familiar. This is an arts center which hosts events like concerts, opera, ballet, and so forth. The dome is clad in steel that was treated with copper oxide, to represent Cardiff’s steel making history. It was designed to withstand the weather conditions on the Cardiff Bay waterfront.

Inscribed on the front of the dome, above the main entrance, are two lines written by Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis. The Welsh version is Creu Gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen, which means “Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration”. The English is In These Stones Horizons Sing. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Walking further along the bay is the World Harmony Peace Statue. You hold the handle of the torch, and make a wish for world peace.

After a little bit more walking, we arrived at the goal for this side trip: The Doctor Who Experience, situated in Cardiff Bay until 2017. The first part of the DWE is an interactive walk-through adventure with the eleventh Doctor in which you get to fly the TARDIS, so that’s pretty fun. Also, you get to learn how to walk like a scarecrow soldier or a Cyberman.

After the interactive part of the Doctor Who Experience, there’s an exhibition. I took a bajillion photographs, but I won’t bore my non-geeky readers with all of those. I selected just seven pictures to give you a sense of the place. If you’re not into Doctor Who, just skip down to the picture that has me in it, and we’ll pick up the post from there.

The first picture is the outfit of Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor. This was part of a row of outfits worn by each of the first ten Doctors.

Similarly, the companions each had outfits in the exhibition. Here’s Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith outfit.

There were several TARDIS control rooms in the exhibition. I’m pretty sure this was the fourth Doctor’s control room.

…and this was definitely Nine and Ten’s control room, brought over to the DWE in its entirety after the regeneration into Eleven. They cleaned it up a bit, but you can still see smoke and fire damage from Ten’s fairly explosive regeneration.

No Doctor Who exhibit would be complete without my favorite robot dog of all time, K-9.

Most of the Doctor’s adversaries were represented, but I particularly liked this Cyberman.

Of course, there were friends of the Doctor present as well. Here’s me, hanging out with the Face Of Boe.

Ok, that’s enough geekery for this post. Once we were done at the Doctor Who Experience, it was time to walk back from Cardiff Bay. I had to force myself not to walk like a Cyberman.

Cardiff Bay is really a very pretty place. Here’s a view out from the dock.

There’s a number of fascinating sculptures around the Bay. This was my favorite- the Merchant Seafarers’ War Memorial, by sculptor Brian Fell. It’s designed to look like both a face and the bow of a ship.

Walking back up the wide sidewalks from the Bay to the little rail station, we couldn’t help but notice all the spiders that were out. I think they were collecting food and preparing for the winter.

Last but not least, on our way out of the Cardiff Bay area, this little cutie walked right up to us, flopped over, and demanded to be loved. Who could say no to those little paws?

Have you ever been to Cardiff? Did you learn to walk like a Cyberman while you were there?

August Break: Under the Bridge

On August 14, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s picture.

Today is a Bavarian public holiday. Public holidays here usually mean I’m traveling somewhere.

Most of my travel is by rail, and I see lots of really neat graffiti. This one caught my eye in the Düsseldorf area.

Do you have a favorite graffiti?

Easter Weekend 2013, Part Three: Zurich, Switzerland

On April 29, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe12 Comments

The Friday and Monday surrounding Easter weekend this year were public holidays in Bavaria. Since I had a long weekend, I decided to do a whirlwind tour through Strasbourg France, Freiburg Germany, Zurich Switzerland, and the Rhine Falls near the Swiss-German border. I’m going to write about them one at a time, though. Next up is Zurich!

Sunday morning, I grabbed an early train from Freiburg into Zurich. If you arrive by train, you will find yourself in one of the busiest train stations in the world, with nearly three thousand trains a day. Hanging overhead in the main hall, you’ll see L’Ange Protecteur by French artist and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, a French sculptor. I hadn’t heard of her sculptures, called Nanas, until I saw this one. There’s a bunch more in in various places around Europe.

In front of the train station, there is easy access to the street tram system, and from there you can get almost anywhere else in the city. The street directly opposite, Bahnhofstrasse, is a very busy and fairly well known shopping street. I spent some time in the evening walking down this street trying to find the source of a tantalizingly delicious smelling food smell- I never figured out where it was coming from.

I took the tram to the Rathaus stop in order to see some of the more well known sights in Zurich, and that let me out in front of this building:

From there, it was a very short walk to most of what I wanted to see. First I walked up the hill to Lindenhof. This is a hill in the middle of the city, with a really spectacular view. Apparently it used to be a Roman fort, but honestly, this is Europe- what wasn’t a part of an old Roman fort? You can see Grossmünster, the church with the two dome-shaped spires on the right side there. That’s the next place I walked.

Grossmünster was a very impressive structure. I didn’t know until after I was gone that you can actually climb the tower. Blast! I missed a chance to go into a tall thing! I’m sure I’ll be back there in the near future, though.

The door of Grossmünster is ornate and fascinating.

Grossmünster is quite pretty inside, also.

Across the river from Grossmünster is a courtyard area that connects shopping streets (and the climb to Lindenhof) to Fraumünster. There are a lot of clocks in Zurich. I wonder how often one of them is wrong.

Inside Fraumünster there are four glass windows which were painted by Marc Chagall. You’re not supposed to take pictures of them from inside the church, so pretend you didn’t see this.

After a busy day of seeing churches and not climbing them, I stopped for lunch in a tasty place called Cafe Odeon, which has apparently been open for more than 100 years.

I had the Rösti, which is a common food in Switzerland, a fried potato dish which is somewhat similar to hash browns. In this case, I had it with fried eggs and a some vegetables. It was quite delicious.

Easter graffiti! I saw this while I was walking to where the Jacob Coffee Museum is. Unfortunately, the Coffee Museum is closed for renovation. The information I read said that it would be open in March of 2013, but it was most definitely not finished with renovations. Oops!

While I was walking to yet another closed attraction (stupid holiday weekend), I saw this lovely flowering tree. Someone tricked this plant into thinking it was already springtime.

The aforementioned closed attraction- This is the Polybahn, a 19th century funicular that goes steeply up and down one of the hills near the center. I like funiculars, naturally, but this one wasn’t running. Stupid holiday weekend.

That was the bulk of my sightseeing for the day. I went back to the hotel room for a little while to shake off a headache in the late afternoon, and didn’t go out again except for dinner, a little more wandering, and some dessert. Dessert was this amazing piece of apple pie at Hotel Schweizerhof’s Café Gourmet, a nifty little place for a snack across the street from the Bahnhof.