Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Castle was awesome! We or I should say I loved it. I think Kit enjoyed the castle, but not as much as me. The history of the castle is very interesting, "During 2000 years of history, the Castle has been a Roman Garrison, a Norman stronghold and in Victorian times was transformed into a gothic fairytale fantasy." The castle it's self was built in the Victorian times but decorated to look like a castle from the medieval times. If you would like to read more about it go here. 

like I said in the previous post, there was a jousting event going on the day we were there. They were many people dressed up in the time period, playing music, making arrows, juggling, sword fighting and jousting. Kind of the perfect day to go.

This is a picture of the keep, where they would go to during a siege. It would have food, water and back up armory to ensure the survival of the people

we took a tour of the inside of the main castle. It was decorated very uniquely. This was the man's smoking room.

Stain glass windows

The main entertaining room

The roof top garden, which would have been filled with flowers and this fountain would have been running.

Kit and I on the roof top garden

The jousting!

Pictures of the keep

View from the steps of the keep over the grounds

me in a window

View of Cardiff from the tower

What is left of the inside of the Keep.

Dungeon?

Oh no, someone is stuck in the tower. I hope she can signal her prince charming.

Thank goodness, he found her and saved her.

 

 and  they lived happily ever after....

Wales

A couple of weekends ago, Kit and I went to Cardiff Wales for the weekend. He had to work on the Friday and Monday there so we decided to make a weekend of it. We headed out on Thursday night on the train. It was raining when we left Leicester but it got to be nice as the ride went on.

Kit was taking pictures left and right, but none of them really turned out. Except these of us on the train.

Me being silly

the two of us.

We got to Cardiff, the capital of Wales late on Thursday night. We stayed with our friend Kate's parents. They  were so lovely. They made us feel like we were at home. The next day Kit and Kate went to work and I went to shop around Cardiff. It was a beautiful city, with all of these arcades through out. (they are covered outdoor shopping areas) If you would like to read about them go here. On Saturday we had breakfast, walked through the arcades, found some amazing vintage shops and this coffee shop below.

My grandpa's name was Harley, so I had to take a picture in front of it.
 We also found the worlds oldest Record shop. Kit spent some time in there while I went to the vintage stores.

We walked around the city, exploring. (those are the welsh flags below)

And we made our way to the Cardiff Castle!!! Some of you might not know, but I love castles. I'm pretty sure I lived in one another life. We bought a ticket and explored the grounds and took a tour of the castle. There was also a jousting tournament going on in the grounds. I was in heaven.

The castle 

the wall around the outside of the castle was build by the owners, who was a lover of animals. Instead of gargoyles he put in different animals he loved.

We also took a walk through Bute park, which is behind the castle. The park use to be the castle grounds. It was a beautiful park with a river running through it.

As we were walking along, we saw some standing stones. Kit and I have read and re-read Diana Gabaldon's book series called Outlander. Where Claire the main character goes back in time through some standing stones. I just read that these stones  were put there in 1978 to celebrate the holding of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. Which you can read about here.  We were excited and hoped they were really old.

We debated spending the weekend in Wales, but we are glad we did. We had an amazing time and it really was the happy country.

 

pictures of the inside of the castle and the grounds to come soon.

Leicester Botanical Gardens

Over the weekend we walked to the Botanical Gardens. It was a smaller botanical garden but very beautiful. They were putting up sculptures all around the gardens and some of them were fabulous.

Here are our pictures of the garden

walking around Britian

Over Memorial Day in the States, we rented a car and drove to Ikea and around Leicester. We had Monday off also, so Kit and I decided to go for a hike. There is the National Forest around a 20 minute drive from here. We decided to see what Groby Pool was like and visit the small village of Groby. We started hiking and realized we were no where near the pools. It was a rainy day so Kit gave me a quick driving lesson and we drove to another small village with stone buildings and thatched rooftops, very British. We had a beer at the local pub and then we went back to the pool. It was small but very beautiful with an amazing old house on it. It was a good day!

First British Hike picture

Rapeseed plants

When we were in the pub we came across this old picture of a bicycle club from the 20's.

We thought this guy looked a lot like Kit.

The Village of Newton Linford

Groby Pool