Our 1st Trip: Wales for the Weekend!

We wanted to test the waters on traveling and hostels, so our friends decided that going to Wales would be a perfect way to go to a different country that wasn't far away from London. Plus, we wanted to see castles! We booked a hostel in Cardiff and train tickets for Saturday after our bus city tour was done. Once Saturday came we were super excited and made it to the Paddington train station early. 

It took about 2 hours by train to get to Cardiff and our hostel was walking distance from the train station. However, when we got there it was raining, and not just sprinkling, but downpouring. I didn't have an umbrella or a jacket with a hood, which was very smart of me so I had to buddy up with a friend under her umbrella. 

We ran to our hostel and were greeted in the foyer with a bulletin board saying there would be free apple pie and ice cream ready in the kitchen at 7pm! Needless to say we were super excited for some warm apple pie after drying off from the rain. Our hostel was so cute and comfy. They had a big flat screen television in the living room with tons of movies you could watch, a nice kitchen, a spacious dining area, and most importantly clean individual full bathrooms! 

We also reserved a private room which had bunk beds and a big bay window with a view of the canal. We dropped our bags off as quickly as possible in our room so we could find a place to get dinner in order to make it back in time for pie! 

We found a nice restaurant on the main road right around the corner from our hostel. Service in restaurants here is a little unpredictable because it is not customary/required to tip in the UK. That's why some servers will literally take your order, give you your food, and you may never see them again until you track them down for the bill. We were getting nervous because our food still hadn't come out and our waitress was nowhere to be found. We only had 45 minutes until pie! Fortunately, we made it back just in time! We had a big day planned for Sunday so we watched the Goonies, had tea, pie, and icecream, and got to bed on the earlier side. 

We woke up the next day to a huge buffet for breakfast. Cailin and I tried some Welsh cakes and they were really good! They are kind of like a soft biscuit with raisins in it. We also pigged out on croissants, chocolate croissants, toast with every kind of jam (and nutella!), fruit, yogurt, juice, and hot chocolate. Yum! I miss that breakfast already!

Also I really wanted to try welsh cakes while in Wales so I'm glad they served them at breakfast! After we ate, we went straight to Cardiff Castle. It was only a 5 minute walk from the hostel and best news of all... it was SUNNY! If you've ever been to the UK you will know that sun is a rarity here. I've only seen sun twice so far in London and we were so excited that for our full castle-seeing day ahead we would have sun! 

We decided to get a tour of the castle house, right next to the actual castle, because we had no clue what it looked like on the inside. At first we didn't even know there was an actual house there and thought there was a castle only. We chose to take the full tour with a tour guide, whereas the other tour only had audio guides. With a full tour, we were able to see rooms that were blocked off to everyone else. I was glad we did that because the blocked rooms were the nicest ones! The first one we went to was the men's smoking room. 

Our tour guide told us that at a party, or when the owners had company, all the men would go into the room to talk/smoke while no women were allowed. The room had so many interesting details with each corner of the wall having an image that represented every season, and the stained glass windows having the god that represented each day of the week.

All of the ceilings in the castle house were amazing too! They all had different patterns such as astrology signs in the men's room and celtic knots in the children's room. 

The children's room was definitely my favorite because all around the wall, different fairy tales were painted. There was Beauty and the Beast, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel amongst others. 

The rooms also had hanging lights that each had an image from a different nursery rhyme on them. Our tour guide asked us to try to guess what each rhyme was based off of the picture and it was pretty hard! The ones I remember were the Cat and the Fiddle and Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. 

After, we went to the two dining rooms, one was for large parties and the other for a small group or just the family. The large dining area was elaborately decorated to no surprise, with vaulted ceilings and the walls painted with different scenes and people, while the small dining room was more simple with wallpaper covered in fruit. There was a large hole in the center of the table in the smaller dining room and our guide asked us to guess what it was used for. After no one came up with the answer successfully, she told us it was for a grape plant. With these grape vines in the center of the table, guests and family members could eat right off of the branch! 

We went to the library and the bedrooms after which of course were decorated beautifully as well, and then went to the actual castle. The castle was really cool since it sits on top of this large hill and has different levels or floors. 

We wanted to see every floor and eventually make it all the way to the top because that way we could get a great view of all of Cardiff. To get there though, you had to take the steepest, tiniest staircase ever, but it was worth it! Seeing Cardiff with the Welsh flag flying from the castle was beautiful. 

The castle also had a little museum that we checked out. All of the information in the museum was written in both English and Welsh which was cool to see. They had a lot of traditional Welsh items and our favorite section... The dress-up area! We tried on a lot of hats and soldier's jackets just for fun.

I didn't expect Cardiff Castle to have so much to see aside from the castle so I'm glad we took advantage of everything they had there. The castle itself was so scenic but the history behind the castle was really interesting also!

Since we all love castles, we then took a 20 minute train ride to Caerphilly Castle, the second largest castle in all of the UK. We decided not to take a tour and just explore the castle for ourselves. 

The town of Caerphilly looked just as I imagined Wales with cute houses and green hills. Since Cardiff is Wales' capital and a larger city it didn't have the same country feel as Caerphilly.

Not only was the scenery so green and pretty but the castle was amazing! It had a moat going all around it, so it had the classic castle feel, and was humongous. 

We didn't even see the whole thing because it went across 33 acres and we couldn't walk around it all or it would have taken forever! Cardiff Castle and Caerphilly Castle were pretty different but equally impressive, so I'm really happy we had the chance to see both. 

After, we went to a cafe across the street with a great view of the castle and had hot chocolates while waiting for the train back to Cardiff. We ended the day by scouring Cardiff for a place to eat, since everything closes so early in the UK, and eventually found a restaurant that was open! 

We did a ton in just one day and by the time we got on our train back to London, we ended up sleeping the whole way since we were so tired. I would've loved more time in Wales but we got a nice glimpse of it and lots of pictures with castles!