My Trip to the UK and Ireland, Day 10

On the stairway was a poster of various skyscrapers, comparing their heights... I really liked it, so I wrote down the website listed at the bottom of the page: Skyscraperpage.com. It appears to no longer exist.

Here we are at Cardiff Castle. It was really "castle-looking" which I thought was awesome. I didn't understand why there were flags from all these different countries though.

Inside the castle walls was the castle keep, on a small hill. Tell me that doesn't look completely awesome... I was pleased.

And here we have.... the army.

...and giant guns.

Here's the castle keep again. We began making jokes about the Normans and Saxons sieging the castle keep. The jokes were funny at the time.

Peacocks! and Robb!

More military dudes in military dress.

Remember the keep? I was quite taken with it.

More peacocks and peahens. We were not to taunt them.

We took a tour of the outer wall buildings, which were really ornate, and very symbolic, yada yada.. but you weren't allowed to take pictures in there, so now we're headed to the keep. and there was a moat! This castle just keeps getting better.

This peahen got very close to us, and I took a bajillion pictures of it.

A billion and one...

in case you forgot...

Here we are inside the keep.

Inside the keep, up a ways, looking out at the city.

Back there is the stadium. Odds are, they play football there.

Higher up in the keep. They were setting up for some sort of demonstration.

A window in the keep.

Here we are at the top of the keep.

A look out at the city.. The weather was perfect.

Another look at the stadium, and surrounding buildings.

A look around from atop the keep.

And the band began to play. Turns out it was the queen's birthday, so we were celebrating. That looks to be a goat up front, as well.

Then war was declared, and the army showed up with guns, and destroyed the keep. It all happened so fast....
Or they brought guns for a 21 guns salute.. one of the two..

These are the buildings inside the castle walls... that's what we toured earlier in the day.

Another look around from the keep.

Hi from Cardiff!

I am crushing the keep!

I'm having a good time.

Now the keep is gone! And someone appears to have claimed my thumb for England. Amazing!

The band continued to play.

More band, and guns.

Setting up the guns.

More setting up, and inspection.

Here they are, guns all set up, and ready to fire.

Then this dude showed up to inspect and preside over the ceremony. No real clue who he is, but I'll go ahead and guess he's some important political dude from Cardiff.

Here's the dude closer up.

Here he's inspecting/meeting the troops.

We were given these cards by two sexy girl soldiers.. They wanted us to join the TAs.

Okay, the time is getting near, and the people get into position.

Here are the guns firing.

Fire!

Fire! some more...

Fire! yet again.

Smart car! Not quite as common as last year, but still around.

So with the castle and salute done, we headed back to the train station just in time to take off, and go to Bath.

Amazing that when you're around them so much, Cathedrals seem less than spectacular. Looking at the pictures now, I'm reminded of how magnificent they are. And they're in like every city.

There were a number of street performers (musical, so far) as we headed towards the Roman bath.

Here's that Cathedral closer up.

Like the other cathedrals, it was large, and impressive.

An ancient Roman road.

Here's the main bath, itself. It's green now, but back in the day it was quite clear.

Now there are statues and the road up above.

We waited around a bit so we could follow along in a free tour.

The tour brought us around to the back rooms, and explained how the baths worked. It was all quite impressive.

On the far side you can see two dudes in togas. Eventually they got yelled at.

Honestly, who throws paper money into a wishing well? Idiots.

Here's toga boy, just seconds befor ehe got yelled at for getting too close to the water. Apparently the water was toxic or something (Lead, maybe? I forget)

The baths were built by the Romans, then eventually were kinda wrecked, then built up again in the Voctorian age, I believe. The ruins date from both periods.

This is how they heated the steam rooms. If you want to know how... do research.

They had these videos set up with "advanced computer graphics" to show how the rooms were used. Honestly, what a waste of a good tv.

Here's Robb! We're on our way to the restaurant thinger, to get a taste of the special Bath hot spring water.

Dickens!

Robb, as Dickens!

More street performers.. I wasn't that impressed.

I still took pictures though, cause that's what I do.

This is... a very long street.

This is a giant cirle.... I think we were less than impressed with this "daring departure from the traditional Georgian Square design."

Here's a picture of me being unimpressed.

It's a big traffic circle.

A bit more walkign, and we arrived here. I forget what it's called, but it was kewl looking. One giant continuous building, with a giant park just past the fence.

Here's a full lookaround the area.

Kids in the park were playing cricket

here's a clip of those kids playing cricket.

This is a Ferrari F355. It's beautiful.

We went in to a pub in bath, downed some Guinness, and saw Greece lose to Portugal.

This is a very blurry Joel, and in the back there was our very lovely bartender girl, with a lovely accent.

And now we're leaving Bath.

...that is, we would be leaving soon. I've got 2 pints of beer in me, and feeling fine. Also, I'm really good looking.

Here's our train. It looks fast.

Notting Hill Gate! We Made it!

We made it back to London, and made it to the hostel Robb had reserved... only they didn't have room for us ("I know what a reservation is".. "I don't think that you do..") So they sent us here for the same price. We ended up ahead on that trade.

We're in a tiny elevator. There's room for two people to fit fairly comfortably. We've got 3 guys with 3 full packs..

This is our room. it was nice.

It had walls and floors and everything. And no mad Russians!

We were all very tired... I took a shower, and was ready to roll over and die.

Beds!