Europe Holiday 2015, August 28 (Castlevania 2)

Even though we didn't have to check-out until 8:00am Jason though it would be good idea to set the alarm for 6:30am to get up for breakfast and start the day. It's hard to complain about a free breakfast...but they didn't have any muesli available!

After check-out and leaving luggage at the hotel for the day it was off to Caerphilly from Cardiff Central train station. I was considering hiring bikes to ride around instead, but there only seemed to be one place that was quite expensive and required advanced booking and the opening hours weren't ideal. Anyway, Caerphilly is a small town about twenty minutes from Cardiff, there are other small towns even closer than that, Cardiff isn't exactly a metropolis. The town of Caerphilly itself was a lot bigger than expected, it has a few main streets around the town centre and many of the same shops as the bigger cities. Possibly the best discovery however was the big cheese!

The big cheese!

Caerphilly has it's own castle to rival the one in Cardiff, only not as big and not as well maintained. The whole castle was surrounded by a moat, these days probably best utilised for keeping the tourists out. There was a collection of old medieval weapons out in the grounds that looked interesting, but unfortunately none you could actually use. The main tower building looked like one corner was just about to fall over, it had broken apart from the rest of the structure some time ago. The rest was in good condition though and was open to walk around, again there were lots of narrow spiral staircases to navigate, but not many people to get in the way since we turned up just after opening time. There was more to see than it looked like from the outside, I probably spent a little over an hour in all.

Outside Caerphilly Castle.

Inside Caerphilly Castle.

The castle wall defense.

Caerphilly.

I got some food from the local supermarket and then headed up to the top of Caerphilly Mountain for lunch. It was about two kilometres walking up a steep hill road, a bit of a treacherous route because there was no footpath and lots of traffic was going in both directions. The view from the top was good, the town looked further away than just a couple of kilometres, and in another direction it was just possible to make out Cardiff.

Caerphilly Mountain.

After lunch it was a longer walk through the country roads to Castell Coch (also known as Castle Coch). The shortest route was through some empty back roads for about 4.5 kilometres, there was some parallel walking tracks some of the time, but due to recent rain they looked very muddy and slippery.

On the way to Castell Coch.

Outside Castell Coch.

Castell Coch was a lot smaller and more rustic than both of the previous castles, it looked more likely to have been used as a family retreat than anything else. The rooms contained lots of old artwork and decorations again, my favourite was a feature wall with the three fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos) because it's about the only bit of Greek mythology I know. That fun was short lived as I smashed my head on a low door frame again, these places definitely weren't built for people six feet or taller. The other highlight was a kind of dungeon room at the bottom of one of the stairwells, which reminded me of the ending of the first Blair Witch Project movie. Other than that this castle wasn't as good as the others.

The fates.

Inside Castell Coch.

Some more walking to reach the nearest station at Taffs Well, about 2.5 kilometres away. This walk wasn't as much fun since it was along some major highway towards the end, but Google Maps came in useful again to explain the best pedestrian path to take.

Since the Cardiff City FC shop had shut down I decided to walk out to the Cardiff City football stadium in the late afternoon. It was about two kilometres until I found the stadium, strangely situated in the middle of a big retail park with an Asda, Costco, Lidl and other smaller stores. The team superstore was more store than super, no magnets and not even any good t-shirts to buy. The detour was a bit of a waste of time then, it was sort of in the opposite direction to the hotel, which meant another 3.5 kilometres back to collect the luggage and head to the train station once again.

Cardiff City FC.

When the train to Manchester pulled up it was already full of people, I only just had time to dump my big suitcase near the entrance and grab one of the last remaining seats. It turned out that this was some kind of combination local and intercity train, so a lot of people actually got off after a few stops - but it was a pretty inconvenient situation for people with luggage and a long journey to have to come aboard to. The train to Manchester:

• Took about 3.5 hours
• I had bread and some tasty chocolate brioche buns for dinner
• There was no power points or wifi on board!
• I discovered I had my camera set to 2 mb 16:9 instead of 13 mb 16:9 or 18 mb 4:3
• At least there was no risk of running out of space!

From the main station at Manchester Piccadilly I walked down to Deansgate to get the light rail (similar to a tram). Google was out of date as the city centre light rail works (like a city loop) had been completed some time in the last year and I could have got straight on to the light rail at Piccadilly instead! The light rail ticket only cost six pounds for Friday night and all weekend, a pretty good bargain. A few stops down to Salford Quays and we made it to the hotel by about 9:00pm.

The hotel review:

• Not too far from city centre
• Rooms almost identical to the other Holiday Inn Express hotels
• Good wifi again
• Free breakfast, but didn't have any newspapers
• No sport TV channels still

• Cardiff
• Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
• Good
• Castles
• Country areas close by
• Decent city centre area
• Modern bay area
• Lots of dragon flags (Wales flags)
• Bad
• Expensive rail prices
• Less tourist attractions
• Maybe too many castles
• Weird welsh language
• Missed Out
• Bute Park
• Doctor Who experience
• National museum
• Roath Park
• St Fagans museum

Europe Holiday 2015, August 27 (South Wales)

A 9:00am flight doesn't sound so early when you book it, but when you work backwards it becomes rather early...

• 6:20 - Breakfast and packing
• 6:30 - Leave hotel
• 6:45 - Bus for the airport
• 7:20 - Arrive at the airport
• 8:00 - Complete airport procedures
• 9:10 - Flight departs

The plane to Cardiff was tiny, probably less than fifty people in one of those aircraft with propellers on the wings. The "international" airport at Cardiff was just as small too, it was like landing at Lilydale airport (I imagine, I've never been there), there was one small luggage carousel and then we were in a car park with a bus stop, and that was it...

Obviously there was no food court or duty free shopping, but there didn't appear to be any tourist information either. We missed a bus by something like thirty seconds, at least the next one was only about 15-20 minutes away, which was remarkable considering our bus departed with only one other passenger.

The bus dropped us off at Cardiff Bay, not far from the hotel. After managing to check-in early again it was off to the redeveloped bay area called Mermaid Quay floors lunch.

There was a lot of stuff around the bay area, like a smaller version of the city centre:

• Mermaid Quay - Restaurants
• Millennium Centre - A Bronze building with Welsh words I couldn't read
• Roald Dahl Plass - A square named after the author, had lots of kids rides, a carousel and some water tower
• Norwegian church
• Dr Who Experience - A warehouse based on the show, probably a combination of exhibits and interactive stuff, there was one of those police boxes at the dock

The Millennium Centre.

Roald Dahl Plass, so where's the chocolate factory?

A Norweigan church in Wales.

It's a pierhead.

The city was about 1-2 kilometers walking distance, so we got the "water bus" up the river. Once we left the bay and entered the river the colour changed into a Yarra River level of brown, the sides were full of washed up plastic bottles and various sports balls, there were hundreds of them.

Water train would have been better.

I'm on a boat.

The first, and last, stop was in the park just outside Cardiff Castle. I couldn't tell from the outside if it was worth going in, but got a ticket anyway, for 12 pounds. It was better than I expected as there a good amount to see. The audio guide narrator had a rather annoying voice and kept going on about some Capability Brown guy - possibly the dumbest sounding name I've ever heard.

Some of the things to see inside were:

• Trebuchet
• Fallout shelter tunnels - My favourite part, lots of old posters about world war rationing, like playing Fallout 3 for real
• Outer walls
• The keep - The big tower in the middle of the grounds, great view from the top, incredibly narrow stairs to get there
• Main building - access was very limited, some expensive old furnishings

A trebuchet and the keep.

The main castle building.

Inside the castle walls.

Chips?

Old kitchen.

The castle grounds.

Lots of gold.

I had a bit of time in the late afternoon to visit the city centre, starting at the souvenir shop for a magnet then continuing on:

• Queen's Arcade - Not much there
• St David's Shopping Centre - A large centre that spans a couple of streets, sadly the Cardiff City FC shop was gone
• St Mary Street - Had a lot of old arcades (not the video game type)

The city.

The Millennium Stadium was near the end of the city, but there were roads and other buildings around so it wasn't very accessible from the south side.

Millennium Stadium.

So I walked back to Cardiff Bay to find somewhere for dinner, along the way the area seemed like it was filled with quite cheap housing, which was a little odd given the proximity to the city and the bay. A few hundred metres across the other side of the main road and train line the properties looked much more modern though.

For dinner we settled on Eddie's Diner, which was not related to Eddie Rocket's at all. I ordered the nachos which were a big disappointment, they were served with this artificial cheese sauce instead of proper melted cheese. After dinner we went for a run all the way around the bottom of the bay and across into Penarth, it was a good route.

Nacho.

The hotel review:

• Free breakfast again
• Fairly spacious
• Location just alright, half way between the bay and the city
• Terribly slow internet, varying from to 10-100 kilobytes

Europe Holiday 2015, August 26 (Croke And Mirrors)

Some bad news on the morning news, there was a fire at Dublin Airport and all flights were grounded for at least a couple of hours. The good news is that I wasn't flying out of Dublin for another 24 hours, but my original itinerary would have had me arriving into Dublin this morning instead! That would have been a pretty bad birthday experience.

So I started the day with a trip out to Howth, which is at the end of the train line to the east, and takes about twenty five minutes to get there. Howth is a nice small harbour town where lots of boats and yachts are docked, there's a few shops and restaurants and some small islands are just off the coast as well. After a quick lap around the harbour we picked one of the cliff walk routes and set off, just the intermediate distance rather than the full circuit in the interest of time. The cliff walk had a few hills but wasn't too difficult, although the path did run perilously close to the edge at times. There was lots of flowers on the hill sides, a bit of wild life and an occasional house - one even had it's own helipad.

Howth harbour.

Also Howth harbour.

Cliff walk.

Howth international train station.

On the way back I realised we were going to just miss a train if we didn't hurry, so we ran the last kilometre (about seven in total) and made it to the tiny train platform with a couple of minutes to spare.

At least it's not 50 yards.

Back in Dublin I finally got a chance to see the north side of the city and the port. Down the river the Jeannie Johnston ship was docked, it looked even smaller than The Tall Ship in Glasgow, and was undergoing repairs. The Samuel Beckett bridge looked pretty cool, a traffic and pedestrian bridge, much better than the Ha'Penny bridge. On the far side of the river was some big orange structure called the Diving Bell, don't know much that about, and this spectacular building that seemed a waste when I discovered it was just a convention centre - at least it wasn't some big corporate bank building full of jerks.

JJ ship and Beckett bridge.

Also JJ ship and Beckett bridge.

The rest of Dublin.

Diving bell?

I found another KFC during lunch and was finally able to try the Skittles flavour Krushie, it was a big let down and the skittle pieces were too chewy and didn't really work as a drink. There was also a deceiving store call "Direct Sports" instead of "Sports Direct" which was a waste of time.

The shopping centre came out into Henry Street, which apparently in the main shopping street in Dublin because there were people everywhere, even in the middle of the afternoon. My highlight was seeing a pop up Magnum shop selling ice creams for five euros each - that's nearly ten dollars! I think the deal was you could design your own magnum by choosing which chocolate it was dipped in and then which special coatings to add on top, but still, ten dollars...

DIY iced creams.

Near the intersection of Henry Street and another parallel main street there was this massive needle structure called the Spire Of Dublin, no special design at all, just a big thin stick extending into the sky.

The big stick!

O'Connell Street.

To finish the day I gave Jason the choice of Croke Park or Kilmainham Gaol with Phoenix Park, he picked Croke Park.

Croke Park was within walking distance of the city so that was convenient. The entrance wasn't as good, because of a poorly placed waterway you have to walk all the way around the stadium.

The tour cost 12.50 euros, not bad, and started with a ten minute video pieced together from a longer documentary, it was about the build up to a grand final so was fairly interesting.

We got to see some shared players lounge with this super expensive looking chandelier - I'm not sure why two teams would want to spend time together after the game though. Then we got to see one of the change rooms with all of the team shirts hanging up - the colors and designs looked really basic and had generic block colours and shapes, I had no idea what team any of them were.

The big hurling sticks!

We got to go out into the ground level seating area next, the presenter provided some good history about the ground and bloody Sunday, even threw in an ANZAC Gallipoli fact even though we were the only Australians in the crowd.

Croke Park.

We also visited the upper level and some corporate boxes before the end of the tour, the guy again threw in a Richie Benaud reference when mentioning some Irish commentator. The guide certainly knew his stuff and was entertaining, which is usually the difference between a good tour and a bad one - since you usually see the same stuff every time.

Entrance to the Croke Park museum was included as well, there was some old football and hurling stuff that didn't mean much to me, particularly the dumb hurling. What I found most interesting was that there was originally up to 32 counties (from Ireland and Northern Ireland) competing in these tournaments, pretty incredible!

There was also a level with games, we tried to play one where you have to pass a ball at sensor pads on the walls when they light up, but half of the sensors didn't work even if you went up and pressed the ball against them, so that game didn't last long.

It was fun while it lasted.

Temple Bar wasn't too loud during the night again, except one point at 3am when it must have been closing time, this group of loud jerks decided to sing the chorus to that "Hey! Baby" song at least fifty times in a row, I was starting to think they were never going to stop!

• Ireland
• Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
• Good
• Better value with euros than pounds
• Lots of interesting landmarks
• Other towns close by
• Trams
• Bad
• Limited airport transportation
• Limited supermarkets
• Lots of people smoking
• No pay wave anywhere
• Missed Out
• Kilmainham Gaol
• Malahide
• Phoenix Park

Europe Holiday 2015, August 25 (CQD)

Due to a very ambitious schedule I only got to spend an afternoon in Dublin before boarding an "international" train to Belfast the next morning. The train departed at 7:30am and took about two hours to reach Belfast, making a small amount of stops along the way. There were a few small towns to look at along the way and some coastline, but otherwise it was the standard grass countryside for the majority of the trip. I took my passport just in case it was needed at the other end, but you are free to come and go as you please it would seem.

Queen's Bridge.

From the station we set off to the Titanic Quarter which, as you might have guessed, was where they built the Titanic, and some other similarly unsuccessful ships. The area now contains one large building called the Titanic Belfast Experience, the self guided tour included:

• A history of ship building in Belfast
• The construction of Titanic
• A fairly pointless slow cart ride showing what it was like for workers during construction
• The launch of Titanic
• A strangely quick transition into the sinking and rescue of Titanic

Titanic experience.

Cart ride.

Some old book.

All aboard.

Most weren't so lucky...

We got through the tour in about 1.5 hours, it was worth a visit. The next destination was the Cathedral Quarter, otherwise known as the city centre. I passed the Big Fish sculpture along the way, which I think is the first "big thing" so far, although I forgot to look for a guide to "UK big things". After walking down High Street and through Victoria Square shopping centre, an open air centre with a big glass roof, I found a Mexican restaurant and took a break at the Town Hall for lunch. As much as I love burritos (also nachos) they definitely aren't the kind of thing you can have every day - I usually prefer simple bread and fruit (and energy drink!), it's a lot cheaper too.

The big fish!

The big this thing!

I'm not exactly sure what the next quarter is called, maybe the War Zone Quarter would be appropriate. I started off by walking up Shankill Road (the loyalists). As you may expect from the British loyalists, there was Great Britain flags all along the main street, but otherwise only a few murals. At the end of the street the Peace Wall begins, which separates the two sides. There is a high wall running along one side of the street, and most of the brick wall is now covered in graffiti - a big disappointing compared to a visit to what still remains of the Berlin Wall (as of 2011 at least). We came out on Falls Road (the republicans) at the other end, which was about the same but with a lot more murals, and plenty of taxi drivers taking visitors around on personal tours.

Shankill Road.

Peace Wall.

Also the Peace Wall.

Still the Peace Wall.

Back at the city I found a small permanent market that had a second hand games store. They were selling a lot of GameCube and Nintendo 64 games, but they were all the common games, such as a million copies of old FIFA. There was also a general junk shop that had an old Atari 7800 and a Sega Master System! Besides being awkward to transport for the rest of the holiday, I wasn't sure if they came with all of the required cables and controllers - sometimes you just don't get all of the cables you were expecting...

Nintendo.

I had a bit more time to look around the city, I tried to find a magnet but the only souvenir shop around didn't have anything good, they seemed to be selling Republic Of Ireland stuff than Northern Ireland - I should have got something when I was at Titanic Belfast instead...

Better than Sydney Opera House?

It was almost 4pm and the train I had booked back to Dublin wasn't departing until 6:05pm, that left about two hours but it wasn't really enough for any of the remaining plans I had, which were all further out from the city or would be cutting it too fine for time. Instead we decided to sprint back to the station and see if we could sneak on board the only other train leaving before then, at 4:05pm instead. We just made it with a couple of minutes to spare, I flashed my ticket to the inspector and kept running so that he didn't have time to inspect the finer details - probably it wouldn't have been an issue anyway, but it didn't seem worth the risk, and we found some empty seats for the trip back.

I went to the deluxe gym again since there was a bit of rain outside, making it quite wet and slippery on the brick roads around Dublin. Jason decided to risk the elements and came off second best, slipping over somewhere along the way and getting a few cuts and bruises to his face.

• Belfast
• Tourist Rating - 6 out of 10
• Good
• Compact city centre
• Easy to bike or walk around
• Bad
• Back to expensive pounds again
• No good magnets
• No train or tram coverage
• Some places too far away to visit on a day trip
• Missed Out
• Belfast Castle
• Botanic Gardens and Ulster Museum
• Cavehill country park
• Crumlin Road gaol