Cardiff, Wales, Wed 28 - Fri 30 Oct 09

I was in Wales for work, training the South Wales Police ICT Team. The are based in Bridgend but had suggested that I would be better off staying in Cardiff (about a 20 min train ride away). I arrived in Cardiff (or Caerdydd in Welsh - pronounced the same way dd in Welsh is pronounced as an f - Welsh is a very strange language) very late on Wednesday night as I had book club with the girls and didn't want to miss it (there's nothing better than a glass of wine with the girls!).

It was actually the second time I'd been to Cardiff, but the first I was only there for 3 hours during the day for work and saw very little of it. My hotel was really nice. It was the Radisson Blu, right near the train station and it had quite large rooms. It was great fun going to the Police headquarters. They treated me really well and at lunch time took me to their small in-house museum and gave me a couple of souvenirs and even fingerprinted me! I have my fingerprint on my key ring now.

Of course I was working so not much else to say about my couple of days in Bridgend but I did spend Thursday night in Cardiff. To be honest I actually spent most of my time shopping (it was late night) and walking around the city because most things (castle etc) were closed. Cardiff is a pretty cool city, a little rough around the edges in places but good for a night or two.

On Friday after work I came back to Cardiff to grab my bag from the hotel and decided to have a walk around the stadium since it was still light enough. The path takes you along between the river and the stadium which is nice. Along the side of the stadium they have a row of all the rugby nations. Each country is represented by a flag and a mosaic on the ground which shows images that are representative of that country. Of course I found the one for NZ, we had lots of cool things from the silver fern to sheep and the kiwi.

The path then takes you onto the main road where the castle is so had a walk along there (closed again so didn't go in) before walking back through some small shopping alleyways and arcades that hadn't been open the night before.

And I tried a Welsh cake which is sortof like a cross between a scone and a donut. Quite tasty actually. It was a very quick visit to Cardiff but I enjoyed it.