Exploring A Coruña

Today we decided to go into A Coruña to explore.  It’s quite a big city and we saw lots including the marina, the Hercules Column (although it was in a cloud), Plaza Santa Maria Pita, The Domus Museum, the Belas Artes Museum, Santiago Church, and St Dominica.  There was also a traditional mediaeval festival and market going on.  We came back to the campsite restaurant for another good meal.

The drive west across Spain to our first campsite

We arrived at Bilbao at 0745 local time after another great night’s sleep on the ferry.  We started the long drive to Galicia to our campsite which is just outside A Coruña.  It’ called Camping los Manzanos.  We got the tent up and popped out for some supplies then had a nice meal at the campsite restaurant.

A day at sea

We had a brief stop at Roscoff in Brittany to change crew and pick up supplies and then carried on South past Brittany.  There was an interesting talk about whales and other sea life prevalent in the area and we spent a relaxing day reading books and enjoying the lovely weather.  We had a nice meal in one of the ship’s restaurants in the evening followed by a quiz in the bar.  We came second.

Off on a long ferry trip to Bilbao

We had sung all the services at Westminster Abbey with CLCC this weekend so were quite tired.  We had the car and all our kit in central London so drove straight down to Portsmouth to get the ferry to Bilbao.  We had a curry on the way, which was rather good, and got to the ferry in plenty of time for our 2330 crossing.

Cardiff Castle and the journey home

We had breakfast and then checked out of the hotel this morning.  We walked over to Cardiff Castle and had a good explore - it has a lot of interesting history and has a museum of Welsh military history called "In the Firing Line".  It is an exhibition commemorating over 300 years of proud and distinguished history including the Battle of Waterloo 1815, Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus 1879 as well as recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

We had lunch at another nice little independent restaurant called Minuet and then had a look around the museum of Wales followed by a trip into Cardiff's Winter Wonderland and then the train back home.  It had been a fun trip and the bonus was that we had had some decorating done at home while we'd been away!

It was good to get another first class train home (Advance firsts are cheap) but rather disappointing that the first class lounge at Cardiff Station is not open at the weekends - we'd not have got there quite so early if we had known that!

Exploring Cardiff and a ballet

We got up fairly early today and had a nice breakfast in the hotel.  We had a good explore of Cardiff and had a look at its covered market.  It's clear that the council in Cardiff looks after it much better than Oxford City Council does the one in Oxford!  We visited St John the Baptist church and had a nice coffee there then joined an old University friend for lunch in the Gourment Burger Kitchen near the central library.  It was good to catch up.

After a bit more exploring we went back to the hotel for a rest and to take advantage of its nice spa.  The evening was spent at St David's hall at a performance of the ballet  Swan Lake by the Russian National Ballet and The Siberian National Ballet .  It was very enjoyable.   Afterwards we had dinner at a gorgeous Portuguese restaurant called Madeira - the food was excellent and served on skewers that hung from hooks in the ceiling!  It just shows that independent restaurants are often so much nicer than faceless chains with indifferent staff.

We had a drink afterwards at a famous pub called the Golden Cross and then went back to the hotel for bed.

A new year trip to Cardiff

After a busy Christmas and new year we thought a trip down to Cardiff for a couple of nights would be fun. We left this morning on a first class train and arrived in Cardiff around lunchtime.  While on the train I'd had an email from Strada with a lunch offer so we went and tried the one in Cardiff bay.  The food was fine but the service was awful.

After lunch we had a wander around the bay, visiting the Millennium Centre, the Norwegian Wooden church and the Senedd - the Welsh Parliament building.  We got a train then back into central Cardiff and booked into our hotel, the Hilton, which was pleasant.

Our evening consisted of a trip back to the Millenium Centre to see Singin' in the Rain.  It was a good performance and I've never seen so much water on a stage!  We got a bus back into town afterwards and visited a few bars before turning in for the night.