In light of my dear friend Courtney’s recent return to Canada, I thought it would only be appropriate to recount our adventures in Wales nearly a year ago. I’m fortunate enough to have a super smart best friend who decided to move to Cardiff, Wales to do a specialized masters in communications. She’s also crazy enough to plan to do this move by herself. Partly selfish, I offered to help her move over, and she immediately accepted my offer. Although there were administrative tasks to do on our trip, such as Ikea runs, buying a SIM card, grocery shopping, etc., we also made time to have our fair share of adventures.
After spending the first day running errands in an extremely jet lagged fashion, we departed for Belfast for 2 days. We explored the Titanic exhibit, where we both spent hours enjoying all of the antiques, as well as the area where the Titanic was built. From there, we rode a hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus through the rest of Belfast, learning all about the political turmoil in the city. Both of these things Ryan and I had missed when we were in Belfast, so I felt like I was exploring the city for the first time. On our second day in Belfast, we headed out to the breathtaking Giants Causeway. As Ryan and I discussed in last week’s podcast episode in Ireland, this has to be one of our biggest travel fails….. ever. Having not done our research before heading to Belfast, we had completely missed Giants Causeway. After spending a day there with Courtney, I highly recommend visiting Giants Causeway, as it is one of the most beautiful landmarks I have ever seen. The soap stones are naturally all the same shape, towering at different heights throughout the causeway, making it an extremely interesting place to explore.
We returned to Cardiff, exhausted, but ready for the week ahead. Courtney had orientation for class, so I kept myself busy by going for runs in the park, admiring the view of the Cardiff castle and the river as I ran. In between orientations, we sought out cute restaurants and tried to get to know Cardiff a little bit better. It’s actually a super cute little city, with lots of adorable and delicious places to eat. On top of that, we tried to get to know the Cardiff University campus, which is old and beautiful, and gave me an insane amount of jealousy that Courtney was going to get to study there all year. For some reason, I love the idea of studying in an old library with rows and rows of old books.
We took 2 days midweek to get out of Cardiff and visit London. This is easily one of my favourite cities that I have ever visited, and I was super excited for Courtney to see the city. I think she may have loved it as much as me. We hit all the major tourist points, seeing Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and taking a ride on the London Eye to really get a feel for the city. It had been a few years since I had ridden the London Eye, and the view was definitely worth the money, as we got to the top just in time to watch the sunset over London. It was truly breathtaking! Our day of sightseeing ended with dinner and drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe, before passing out. While in England, we also visited the beautiful town of Bath, and went to Stonehenge. We spent the the morning exploring the royal bathes in Bath, and then wandered the city, getting extremely lost, before catching the train onwards to Stonehenge. We had packed a bottle of wine, and an adorable picnic dinner so that we could watch the sunset over Stonehenge. Unfortunately, rocks close (this is my second biggest travel fail), and we were only able to see Stonehenge from a distance. Nevertheless, I can say I saw it, and we were able to enjoy our picnic on the train back to Cardiff!
We capped off our week with 2 visits from my adorable friend, Nonny, who lives in Swansea (an hour outside of Cardiff), going for both dinner and brunch with her. It was great to see her, and it was even better that she showed us around a little bit. We also went out for a graduate students pub crawl with a few of Courtney’s flatmates, having a blurry night that consisted of too many ciders and a weird 90’s club. It finally came time to say goodbye to Courtney and for me to head back to Canada. Although I had been puzzled by Courtney’s original choice to live in Wales, I quite enjoyed Cardiff, and promised myself that I would one day return to Wales to explore a little bit more. As with almost everywhere I have been, there are so many more things that I want to see and do!