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| View from the hotel |
Leaving the Strata SE1 wasn't easy. Not just because it was so cool. But rakka had busted her Oyster card the day before, so she couldn't get in the tube. It was too early for the E&C tube ticket office to be manned. For the first time since we'd been there, the streets completely failed to be crammed with cabs.
After some minutes of hoping for a cab, we went back to the Strata and had them call. A mini cab came eventually, around the back. We ran. He didn't take cards, I had not much cash. I hopped out at a cash point, and while I was doing that, rakka worked her magic. We were soon driving past buck house like we were in a grand prix. It would have been tremendously fun if we our train wasn't leaving in 10 minutes.
We finally got to Paddington. Tipped the driver even though that's not done. He had broken many traffic laws for us, after all. With nine minutes to spare, I realized I had the wrong notebook out, and the right one, the one with the ticket confirmation numbers, was buried in my luggage. I got to be one of those people who just dismantles all their gear right in the middle of the floor, sweating and cursing the whole time. Finally, the information was found, the tickets were obtained, and we ran for the train.
We made it!
We got on at the wrong end, and a good thing too. By the time we dropped in to our seats, the train had started moving. Nothing like a tremendous amount of stress to start out the day.
You know what else is fun? When your train gets stopped for nearly an hour before it even gets to Reading because of work on the track. And it's a joy when this puts the train so far behind that the driver insists on taking a smoke break outside of Gloucester. And what are you doing outside of Gloucester anyway. How is that on the way to Cardiff?
Anyway, we finally got to Cardiff. Shed met us at the station. Tired and hungry, our first stop was Nandos.
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| Nandos! |
This was my first time at a Nandos. Can you believe it? Neither can I. It's good'n'spicy, and I hear they treat their workers well.
Anyway, refreshed, Shed took us over to the Cardiff Museum.
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| M. Bison |
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| "Hey, no photos. Hey!" |
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| Plastic Champers |
The Cardiff Museum, formally the National Museum of Wales, is cool, in that 'a little bit of everything' eclectic sort of way. It kind of reminded me of the Pink Palace in Memphis. But Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have never pursued criminals through the Pink Palace lobby. The Doctor has never
fought monsters there (nor have any torchwood staff visited).
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| Shhh. We keep it raw on the set. |
Of course, I was never accosted by security for taking photos in the Pink Palace either. The little old dude that scolded us to not take pictures of the special exhibit would have been cute if he didn't keep saying it five times after we'd already put the cameras away.
Anyway, after the dinos, and the animatronic mastodons that I took tons of unusable video of, and the other special exhibit (about the queen) we came across the Neanderthal exhibit. Rakka and I amused ourselves by doing the
sexy neanderthal thing next to them for some minutes.
Shed hadn't been introduced to the sexy neanderthal though. So we repaired to the nearest cafe nerd to watch at top (iphone) volume. Everyone was too polite to tell us to shut up.
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| Cafe Nerd. |
The Cafe was near the castle. I love me a good old castle. But we've
been in before, so we skipped it this time.
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| There Castle. |
Finally, after all this rambling around, we made it to our hotel. Shed got us the hookup. The Radisson Blu Cardiff is probably the snazziest, and definitely the tallest place in town. We got the corner room on the top floor, overlooking the town, mostly, but you could see Cardiff Bay if you just looked opposite of where Shed was photographing (below).
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| Our host. |
We ended up just hanging out, lording it over the town for quite a while.
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| Sunset, Cardiff |
Shed had to take off, so rakka and I popped out to the Tesco Express and got some booze and foods. We spent the evening eating Pot Noodle and watching the sun go down.
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| This has been my desktop picture for a while |
I can't tell you how much better Pot Noodle tastes on the 21st floor of a fancy hotel. Actually, I can. It tastes just as bad, but in an even better than normal way. Snub the whole tower full of fancy-asses while being king fancy-asse. I'll sign up for that assignment any day.
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| Top Right. All the way top. |
Tomorrow (trip time) we hang out in Cardiff with Shed. There are two pubs and some shops, and another Nandos!
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