The Hague / Cardiff / Dover - English Castles

Monday 21 January 2008 to Friday 25 January 2008
I had some pretty long work days in the Hague due to some huge deadlines. But I did get out on Thursday night with Peter, Sean and Gordon to a few bars in the Hague...although I "paid for it" at work on Friday!

Back in London on Friday evening, I met up with Richard and we had dinner at HK Diner, a cheap and nasty restaurant in Chinatown. Today was actually Yang's and my 5 year wedding anniversary, but given I was in London and he was in KL for a friend's wedding, there was no celebration!

Saturday 26 January 2008
This morning I caught an early train to Cardiff, the capital of Wales. During my time in the UK, I concentrated so much on visiting cities on the Continent I forgot how much the UK itself has to offer. As a result I had never been to Wales, even though it was so close.

On the itinerary today was:
- Shopping on St Mary Street and its many Victorian and Edwardian arcades, Queen Street, and St David's Shopping Centre
- Cardiff Castle, the home of the Marquis of Bute, descended from King Robert II of Scotland. The Bute family are responsible for turning Cardiff into a modern city by capitalising on the mining of coal on their lands and building the Cardiff Docks, the biggest and most prosperous coal port in the world in the 19th Century. The inside of the Castle and the Tower, designed by William Burges, is very elaborate with murals carved from wood, marble and imprinted into stained glass.

Pic 1: Cardiff Castle with Millenium Stadium in the background; Pic 2: The Keep.

- Castell Coch, a fairytale castle nestled on a hill in the small town of Tongwynlais. Like Cardiff Castle, it was also built for the Marquis of Bute and also designed by William Burges.




- Caerphilly Castle, is the second largest castle in Britain after Windsor, situated in Caerphilly, famous for its cheese. It is a concentric castle (a castle within a castle, with two or more concentric rings) and is surrounded by two lakes. It also has a leaning tower (on the left), a result of subsidence, rather than from attacks.


- National Museum Cardiff, which is like the National Gallery, Natural History Museum, and British Museum combined but on a smaller scale.





- Cardiff Bay with the Wales Millennium Centre, and the National Assembly for Wales or the Senedd

Being Australia Day, I also made an obligatory walk past the Walkabout on St Mary Street and thought about having a snakebite, but by that time I was running late for the train home...

Sunday 27 January 2008
This morning I headed to Jane's & Ed's and embarked with Jane, Thao and Will to Dover, a port town which faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel. If you ignore the massive port industrialization on the right as you enter Dover, you get a pretty amazing view of the white cliffs of Dover and the Dover Castle perched on top of it.

Dover Castle is huge so we "had to stop" and have scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream for morning tea...yummy! This was followed by wandering around more of the Castle grounds before heading for a traditional Sunday Roast at a restaurant Jane & Ed discovered in Folkestone, a Royal holiday destination about 100 years ago, but now pretty much a retirement village. However, the Sunday Roast was great and we were all totally stuffed from a huge selection of salads, seafood, roast and desserts. After our late lunch, we headed back to London, although with a few short stops because Jane's car was overheating. Definitely a memorable day, thanks for organising and driving Jane!