Weekend trip to Cardiff, Wales

I was doing so well, even blogging twice a day, but that was at the EF international housing center about 10 minutes outside of Oxford City Center and now that I am in the heart of Ox and stay at Jesus College I have just been out exploring 24/7!

I am now in the blogging mood and have so MUCH to blog about that I don't want to forget!
Last weekend I adventured outside of Oxford with some great friends from my class to check out Cardiff, Wales.
As we arrived outside the Cardiff Train Station, I was a bit blow away and a bit sceptical at this point. It was dirty, run down, and all I could think of was OHHH NO WHAT DID I GET MYSELF INTO!?!

But turns out Cardiff, Wales is the Las Vegas of the USA. The people didn't hold back if they want to dress up in costumes or sing obnoxiously in the street with all his friends at 10 am!
Cardiff, Wales was not so bad, besides getting bite by what I hope was not a poison spider my adventure to Cardiff, Wales was more than I could hope for. We stayed in a hostel called nomad (awesome name I know right) it was a backpackers inn. Which was in a scary area of town, but the people running the place were very friendly and showed us the best places to visit, including the Cardiff Castle, only a ten minute walk away!!! Just ten minutes from the nomad we were right in the heart of the city center of Cardiff. There was shopping, pubs, cafes, and even clubs.

Behind Kaitlin and Jenna is the Cardiff Castle, I was so excited to see my first castle in the UK!



Friday July 1st after going to lunch at a pub we went back to the hostel to get ready for the night. We all got cleaned up and hit the town. I believe its imprtant to also explore the night life of ones city, it gives you a since of there culture :)
We learned how care free there culture is compared to Oxford, Oxford is a prestigious area full of some of the best colleges in the world. Cardiff is a bite more relaxed and there night life showed us that.
The next morning we got up and decided we wanted to do some tourist things around the city. We decided we wanted to see Cardiff Castle and Cardiff Bay.

This would most likely be the look out tower and the building they lived in below:

This is me at the Cardiff Castle, with the dragon, which is there symbol that seems to be everywhere!

After taking an hour tour inside the castle we all wanted to go down to the Cardiff Bay. We got lucky on are weekend to Cardiff because it was about 70 degrees out both days! The bay was the perfect place to go on a warm sunny day. The bay area was buzzing with people and all the bars were packed with people. We picked a nice resturant looking out into the bay.

Even though I could have stayed at Cardiff Bay all day, there wasn't really a beach to lay around on so if was back to the hotel for me to catch up on some much needed sleep.

The next morning we checkout one more tourist attraction before heading to the train station. This was a muesum of natural history in the City Center of Cardiff. It was a free muesum which is always nice.
It was full of history on Wales and other different artifacts. There was also an art gallery showing different pictures of kings and queens of different British times.

We went to one more pub, which seems like the most practicle place to get lunch, and then we headed back to the train station.

And so it was Goodbye Cardiff, Wales and home sweet home Oxford.

What an adventure, I got out of my comfort zone of Oxford and went and explored what else the UK had to offer. It was a fun experience and I can't wait to be headed to PARIS this weekend!