![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeToday was my last full day in the UK, and we started with a Castle, continued with a walk around Cardiff and lunch at Cardiff Bay, then ended with a train trip from Cardiff to London and then back out to Heathrow and a final night at a Holiday Inn on this trip.
We visited Cardiff Castle today.
This included walking through outer walls...
...which were used as a shelter during World War II.
Then a tour of the Castle House.
I can't even begin to summarize the Castle House other than to say that it is an extraordinary building. Here, go look at my Cardiff Castle album.
After Cardiff Castle, we walked through the shopping arcades of central Cardiff (no pictures of this; I was too busy trying to take in everything).
We walked to Cardiff Queen Street station and caught a train to Cardiff Bay.
It's a short trip (one stop) and on the way out, I caught a photo of inside the cab of the class 150 DMU that covered the trip.
We had a light lunch at the Lisboa Cafe, including these lovely egg custard tarts. These feature in Welcome to Boy.net by Lyda Morehouse, available from Wizard's Tower Press.
We then walked down to Cardiff Bay itself.
Just below where I was standing when I took this picture is Ianto's Shrine. Fans of Torchwood will know what this means.
Local emergency services were doing demonstrations nearby. This one was a simulated traffic accident. I could see that they appeared to be setting up the "Jaws of Life," as I've seen the North Lyon County Fire Department do on some open days.
Nearby is the Senedd (Welsh legislature) building.
After strolling back up to Cardiff Bay Station, we rode the one stop back to Queen Street. Along the way I saw what I called "Cubetown." It's actually Cargo House Bute Street Containers, described as 13 one and two bedroom apartments built from repurposed shipping containers. I've seen videos about hotels in Japan done this way, and there are some businesses in downtown Las Vegas in a similar building, but I've not seen it done for housing like this.
I mentioned how short the trip from Cardiff Bay to Cardiff Queen Street is. This particular working was just the two stops with this DMU coming into a bay platform at Queen Street. This is not the shortest railway line in the UK (that would be the Stourbridge Town branch, which is 1300 m, roughly 700 m shorter than this trip), but it's close.
We walked some more (my pedometer registered 20,182 steps today) and visited the National Museum of Wales. I think I might have enjoyed this more if it had more history of Wales rather than focusing on geography and wildlife, but that's just my biases showing.
Returning to the Hilton where we'd stayed last night, we retrieved our bags and took a taxi to Cardiff Central.
We went to Platform 2, which is where the signs originally said that our train to London would arrive, but shortly after this TFW train came through, there was an urgent platform-change announcement telling everyone on Platform 2 that our Great Western Railway service to London Paddingon had just arrived on Platform 1.
Everyone on Platform 2 quickly relocated. Fortunately, the two platforms are adjacent to each other, so we didn't all have to dash downstairs and around. That would have been very difficult with me toting around about 50 kg of stuff spread over four bags. Fortunately, this train was relatively lightly loaded, so we were able to get everything stowed.
After three weeks, I was back in England as we crossed under the Bristol Channel, with our first call after crossing the border after Newport being Bristol Parkway. The next stop was Swindon. Coincidentally, Lisa called me just before we reached Swindon, where I "closed the loop" on my travel on this trip since we'd come down here during our London stay to visit the STEAM museum.
Our IET, much more comfortable when it wasn't rammed full like the one from Swansea to Cardiff was last night, made short work of the remaining distance at 200 km/h, making only one more intermediate stop (Reading), and soon we were back at Paddington Station. We had burritos at Barburrito on the Paddington Mezzanine. They were okay, although I think the ones from my local place in Fernley are better, and I'm sure the ones I used to get in Belmont/San Carlos when I worked there are. But hey, they were not bad.
Having learned my lesson about traveling with heavy luggage when we came from Heathrow at the start of this trip, we sprung for Heathrow Express. Yes, it's quite expensive for the distance involved (£25 one way), but there's plenty of room for luggage and there are toilets on board, both of which are things I appreciated.
At Heathrow, we went to the Heathrow Central Bus Station. I had booked a room at the Holiday Inn Heathrow Bath Road, and we'd worked out that we should be able to make it to the hotel by a relatively inexpensive public bus rather than the more expensive (and sometimes more circuitous) Hotel Hoppa or other means. This did work, as we caught a bus that stopped pretty much across the road from the hotel. However, what was not obvious is that crossing the busy Bath Road is difficult and rather dangerous. There was no signaled pedestrian crossing at the nearby roundabout, and we had to take our chances crossing there. Fortunately, there was enough of a gap that we got across.
The front desk person informed me that thanks to my Platinum IHG status, they'd given me a one-class upgrade, which is pretty good considering that I'm staying on points. After listening to my story of the past 45 days and my stays at the Crowne Plaza King's Cross and also Glasgow and Chester, he was sufficiently entertained that he bumped me up one more class to what he claimed was one of the best rooms in the hotel.
It's not bad, and it included a refrigerator with several complimentary sodas and waters; more than I'm accustomed to having. Now I've had bigger room upgrades before, but for a hotel in this category and location, I think I did okay for a one night stay.
Because I'm staying on points, there's no included breakfast, but I got stuff at Paddington to have in the room tomorrow morning, and I should have enough time to get breakfast at Heathrow as well. And as the hotel is on the other side of the road from where the bus dropped us this evening and there is a stop right in front of the hotel that is only one or two stops from Heathrow Central, it should not be difficult to get back over to the airport tomorrow to start the trip back to Nevada.
Tomorrow is likely to be a very long day, and I'm not sure when I'll get my next entry. With the long layover in Denver, I might check in there, but it might not be until I get to the hotel at Reno Airport late Sunday night.
It's been a great trip, but I think I'm ready to go home now.
We visited Cardiff Castle today.
This included walking through outer walls...
...which were used as a shelter during World War II.
Then a tour of the Castle House.
I can't even begin to summarize the Castle House other than to say that it is an extraordinary building. Here, go look at my Cardiff Castle album.
After Cardiff Castle, we walked through the shopping arcades of central Cardiff (no pictures of this; I was too busy trying to take in everything).
We walked to Cardiff Queen Street station and caught a train to Cardiff Bay.
It's a short trip (one stop) and on the way out, I caught a photo of inside the cab of the class 150 DMU that covered the trip.
We had a light lunch at the Lisboa Cafe, including these lovely egg custard tarts. These feature in Welcome to Boy.net by Lyda Morehouse, available from Wizard's Tower Press.
We then walked down to Cardiff Bay itself.
Just below where I was standing when I took this picture is Ianto's Shrine. Fans of Torchwood will know what this means.
Local emergency services were doing demonstrations nearby. This one was a simulated traffic accident. I could see that they appeared to be setting up the "Jaws of Life," as I've seen the North Lyon County Fire Department do on some open days.
Nearby is the Senedd (Welsh legislature) building.
After strolling back up to Cardiff Bay Station, we rode the one stop back to Queen Street. Along the way I saw what I called "Cubetown." It's actually Cargo House Bute Street Containers, described as 13 one and two bedroom apartments built from repurposed shipping containers. I've seen videos about hotels in Japan done this way, and there are some businesses in downtown Las Vegas in a similar building, but I've not seen it done for housing like this.
I mentioned how short the trip from Cardiff Bay to Cardiff Queen Street is. This particular working was just the two stops with this DMU coming into a bay platform at Queen Street. This is not the shortest railway line in the UK (that would be the Stourbridge Town branch, which is 1300 m, roughly 700 m shorter than this trip), but it's close.
We walked some more (my pedometer registered 20,182 steps today) and visited the National Museum of Wales. I think I might have enjoyed this more if it had more history of Wales rather than focusing on geography and wildlife, but that's just my biases showing.
Returning to the Hilton where we'd stayed last night, we retrieved our bags and took a taxi to Cardiff Central.
We went to Platform 2, which is where the signs originally said that our train to London would arrive, but shortly after this TFW train came through, there was an urgent platform-change announcement telling everyone on Platform 2 that our Great Western Railway service to London Paddingon had just arrived on Platform 1.
Everyone on Platform 2 quickly relocated. Fortunately, the two platforms are adjacent to each other, so we didn't all have to dash downstairs and around. That would have been very difficult with me toting around about 50 kg of stuff spread over four bags. Fortunately, this train was relatively lightly loaded, so we were able to get everything stowed.
After three weeks, I was back in England as we crossed under the Bristol Channel, with our first call after crossing the border after Newport being Bristol Parkway. The next stop was Swindon. Coincidentally, Lisa called me just before we reached Swindon, where I "closed the loop" on my travel on this trip since we'd come down here during our London stay to visit the STEAM museum.
Our IET, much more comfortable when it wasn't rammed full like the one from Swansea to Cardiff was last night, made short work of the remaining distance at 200 km/h, making only one more intermediate stop (Reading), and soon we were back at Paddington Station. We had burritos at Barburrito on the Paddington Mezzanine. They were okay, although I think the ones from my local place in Fernley are better, and I'm sure the ones I used to get in Belmont/San Carlos when I worked there are. But hey, they were not bad.
Having learned my lesson about traveling with heavy luggage when we came from Heathrow at the start of this trip, we sprung for Heathrow Express. Yes, it's quite expensive for the distance involved (£25 one way), but there's plenty of room for luggage and there are toilets on board, both of which are things I appreciated.
At Heathrow, we went to the Heathrow Central Bus Station. I had booked a room at the Holiday Inn Heathrow Bath Road, and we'd worked out that we should be able to make it to the hotel by a relatively inexpensive public bus rather than the more expensive (and sometimes more circuitous) Hotel Hoppa or other means. This did work, as we caught a bus that stopped pretty much across the road from the hotel. However, what was not obvious is that crossing the busy Bath Road is difficult and rather dangerous. There was no signaled pedestrian crossing at the nearby roundabout, and we had to take our chances crossing there. Fortunately, there was enough of a gap that we got across.
The front desk person informed me that thanks to my Platinum IHG status, they'd given me a one-class upgrade, which is pretty good considering that I'm staying on points. After listening to my story of the past 45 days and my stays at the Crowne Plaza King's Cross and also Glasgow and Chester, he was sufficiently entertained that he bumped me up one more class to what he claimed was one of the best rooms in the hotel.
It's not bad, and it included a refrigerator with several complimentary sodas and waters; more than I'm accustomed to having. Now I've had bigger room upgrades before, but for a hotel in this category and location, I think I did okay for a one night stay.
Because I'm staying on points, there's no included breakfast, but I got stuff at Paddington to have in the room tomorrow morning, and I should have enough time to get breakfast at Heathrow as well. And as the hotel is on the other side of the road from where the bus dropped us this evening and there is a stop right in front of the hotel that is only one or two stops from Heathrow Central, it should not be difficult to get back over to the airport tomorrow to start the trip back to Nevada.
Tomorrow is likely to be a very long day, and I'm not sure when I'll get my next entry. With the long layover in Denver, I might check in there, but it might not be until I get to the hotel at Reno Airport late Sunday night.
It's been a great trip, but I think I'm ready to go home now.
