The first day, I took a tour of the Millennium Stadium with my friend Zhao, who also tagged along with her husband to the conference. This stadium opened in 1999 and it's most famous use is for Welsh rugby games. One day we hope to go to a game with my uncle and cousin who have awesome seats for all of the home games. In the meantime, we got to see the players' dressing room (apparently they don't call it a locker room here), walk out to the pitch and glimpse what it would be like to have a VIP booth at the stadium. But actually, I would say there isn't a bad seat in the house because they designed it to not have any pillars blocking any views (wait to go structural analysis!).
We spent most of the next day touring the National Museum of Wales and boy, were we surprised to find really big names there! The Welsh art was beautiful too but we were thrilled to see Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh, just to name a few. There were two Welsh sisters that collected all these masterpieces and then bequeathed them to the museum ~50 years ago. It was a really nice surprise!
On Wednesday, I spent the day on the Cardiff waterfront with my aunt and uncle who drove over from Swansea (~1 hour drive). Unfortunately, this was also the day that it rained the most. It started raining at 3 pm and didn't stop until sometime during the night. But we managed to have a nice day touring the Millennium Centre and the Senedd building (Welsh for Senate). The Millennium Centre is where you go for stage performances and we also got an in-depth tour of the building which was guided by the world's fastest talker. We also toured the Senedd and even sat in on some of the proceedings as the assembly members debated and scrutinized policies. It was actually pretty interesting and it was surprise to hear the members constantly switch between Welsh and English. We even had headphones so we could hear the translation. Even though we'll be living here, I can pretty much guarantee I will not be learning Welsh.
On my last full day there I was able to tour Cardiff Castle, which was also very impressive. If you ever go to Cardiff, the castle should definitely be on your list of things to see. I won't go into much detail but here is the Keep which is in the center of the castle grounds. Before you head up, it warns you there are lots of steep steps to get to the top. Luckily, Angus and I were up for it. The picture I took from the top shows the castle house on the right and you can see the white poles of the Millennium Stadium protruding around the castle towers. By the way, I apologize for not being able to take magnificent pictures like Nick! (it was also pretty dark outside, to be fair)
On Wednesday, I spent the day on the Cardiff waterfront with my aunt and uncle who drove over from Swansea (~1 hour drive). Unfortunately, this was also the day that it rained the most. It started raining at 3 pm and didn't stop until sometime during the night. But we managed to have a nice day touring the Millennium Centre and the Senedd building (Welsh for Senate). The Millennium Centre is where you go for stage performances and we also got an in-depth tour of the building which was guided by the world's fastest talker. We also toured the Senedd and even sat in on some of the proceedings as the assembly members debated and scrutinized policies. It was actually pretty interesting and it was surprise to hear the members constantly switch between Welsh and English. We even had headphones so we could hear the translation. Even though we'll be living here, I can pretty much guarantee I will not be learning Welsh.
One last thing I want to mention is that I also took a peek inside one of the oldest buildings in Cardiff which is St. John's Church. It was really dark in there but I was able to get a picture of this: someone put together a model of the church only using matchsticks. This guy must have had a lot of patience!
