On Beyond

Cardiff, Wales
Caerdydd, Cymru
Day ?

So with heavy hearts did we leave the Promised Land...(shoulda never left) and headed southerly towards the capitol and the airplanes that would take us elsewhere. Or so we thought, see things were already weird with the Icelandic volcano eruption and all that. Maybe we shouldn't have been such optimists and just called the damn airlines before we left Liverpool. But coulda, shoulda, woulda don't count for much. But next time...we'll know better. If you are given that big a sign, only a fool wouldn't take it, right? Well colour me and the missus foolish then, cos we didn't.

Not that isn't to say we didn't have a good time on our trip south, seeing some things and places that neither of us had before. But given a second chance, yeah we'd've stuck around the 'Pool a little longer and still been able to do most of the stuff that we really enjoyed. Now I don't know what people imagined with the volcano shutting down all the airports, maybe it was supposed to look like some Post-Apocalypse thing, or like dust storm here in Iraq. But we really had lovely weather, sunshine and clear skies for the most part. And this is Britain don't you know.

So we headed out to Cymru, also known as Wales. Also know to be home of the original Britains, yeah. We hit Cardiff cos its supposed to have a rift between time and space running through it and had a pretty great time. Found our favorite brewery "Brains" the Official Brewery of Wales. And learned that like places in Canada everything on every sign is written in two languages. Welsh and English, it is nice cos it shows that Wales aren't going to let anyone grind them down. The Red Dragon may seem to be sleeping, but when the time comes for it to wake up...well Englishmen beware.

First up we visited the Doctor Who exhibit. The new series chronicling the adventures of The Doctor and his companions are produced by BBC Wales so they keep it all alive in a mall. This is the one standing exhibit, there are a couple of others that travel around though. So we found a pint and went into the show.

Here's the missus with "Poor Lazlo"
And yours truly with the Daleks, "Exterminate!"

Interlude: Iraq

Weird really it seems sometimes that I am going to actually finish my tour here before I finish my Tour of Duty. Not much to report from this side of the world it is just day-in-day-out sort of doings. But while I've got your attention I thought I would say something about the Comments box that lies at the bottom of each post. I really do like getting the Comments, I really hoped that this would be an interactive thing. Where I could not only digress left and right, but also where you the people could have your say. I do check on them often, so don't feel like if you've had to catch up on a few posting at a time you can't comment on whatever you like.

I took some more pictures of 'round here and will get them up soon. There are a few more I want to take and maybe even some video. So stay tuned.

End Interlude

So here we are in front of the Big Ass fountain, yup that's water running down that thing behind us. This is all at Millennium Centre/Roald Dahl Plaza (yeah the "James & the Giant Peach" etc, guy was Welsh and I guess some kinda spy or something. Below is the Theater the inscription is in Welsh and English and didn't actually say "Bad Wolf" but, "In These Stones Horizons Sing." Oh, yeah and what you can't really tell is that the words are actually windows, pretty cool.

And I would be very remiss if I didn't take a picture in front of the Norwegian Church.



How cool is that? The church is an arts centre now but it goes way back to when Cardiff Bay had a swinging port and the old Norge salts needed a place to pray.

Wales is cool, check it out sometime. We have only scratched the surface but definitely deserves more time. And you never know you just might run into the Welsh Wonder, Mr. Tom Jones.

Cheers,
g