Cardiff – what a beautiful capital city! The River Teff runs through it. It is very close to Bristol Channel, a branch of the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a stunning castle smack on the middle of the downtown shopping area. Wales is spectacular. It has a rich history and language. In fact, many of the highway signs were in Welsh Gaelic only. In others, it was the first language, and by the time we figured out that there was English on the bottom of the sign, we had driven past it! The country has a lot of coastline and a lot of rolling hillsides.
We visited the castle on May 25, 2017, although we were in Wales for almost two weeks as part of a 104-day driving trip through the UK and Ireland. Various pictures of the exterior and interior of the castle can be seen in the first 16 photos. It was so beautiful! The detail was exquisite.
This was our description of the castle, sent in an email to a friend that night: Of all the castles we have seen in all the countries we have been to, the interior of this one has to be the prettiest. Most of the interior was designed by Lord Bute in the 1800s, and he was the Bill Gates of the day. He told the architect/designer to spare no expense. Now, the castle had been there from the 1100s, so it was only redecorating the place. We took photos of a lot of ceilings and fireplaces. To make you laugh: there are pix of each of us with tiles above our heads showing decapitated heads on poles. This is one of the illustrations in….get ready!……the Children’s Room! The tiles are all fairy tales, and that is one of the interpretations of Jack and the Beanstalk!
You can see the heads on the pikes after the photo of the devil with his/her tongue sticking out. All of the details from frightening fairy tales were there. Impressive!
Following the castle photos are some from around town and in the area. We drove all the way to Swansea and visited The Mumbles, the name given to headlands on Swansea Bay. As you can see from the photos, we saw Mumbles Christadelphian Ecclesia – just runs off the tongue, doesn’t it? But we loved the line on the sign, “Weekly Meetings – God Willing.” Nothing is taken for granted! The name of the tea room, Latte-da, also appealed to us. And we always try to save the best photo for last, so there it is, with its funny warning about swimming in the reservoir. We have found that people all over the world have a great sense of humor!
