Cardiff, Wales, United KingdomPrimero Brickworks Apartments, Cardiff Wales
Stayed in bed until the alarm rang this am, showered and ate breakfast - cereal with berries and yogurt - and then got ready for our outing to the Museum.
We walked past the Cardiff Castle, found the Museum and learned that it was closed on that day - or was it all Mondays - for a an opening of a special wildlife photography exhibit. But the two guards at the door were so helpful: they suggested St Fagan's open air museum, told us all about it and then ordered a taxi for us to get there!
It seemed like a ride of more than the 4 miles they said it would be, but we went past a lot of attractive terrace and semi-detached houses on tree-lined streets before arriving at the St Fagan's. Not only did it have so many attributes, but the museum was free as well. We got our maps for 50 pence apiece (where did my map disappear to?) and went on our way. It looked as if there were two main loops - one with the castle and the other with more old farms - so we took the farm loop and saved the castle for last.
I was hoping to see some animals, and one of the first buildings we saw was a charming stone conical pig sty....with no pigs. We saw a few farmhouses - one looked like a barn but was nicely furnished.
Each of the houses seemed to have a fireplace, a table with dishes and crockery, a bedroom or alcove with a big bed and a ladder to a loft for the children's sleeping quarters. There was a sort of village green with a general store and a public urinal and a few other shops plus a bakery where we bought scones with jam for a snack to tide us over. There was also a pair of iron-age houses which were quite fascinating because of the high thatched ceiling. The guide told us that the smoke would waterproof the thatch as well as make it unattractive for insects and mice, etc, but when he was telling other visitors this, a mouse tumbled down, so the story goes. The smoke was also supposed to decrease the oxygen - was that what deterred the mice?? I did finally see two pigs in a pen next to one sty belonging to another farm though.
From there we went back to the main building where we had coffee at the cafe, bought some postcards and then headed out for the other section: we now saw the wool weaving building. We had seen the blacksmith's in the other section. We had looked for the cider mill but couldn't find that. We also went to the corn mill but the miller wasn't there even though he had been on the day before. We saw the boat yard and the ponds with ducks, or were they canals? We approached the castle - or manor house - through their extensive gardens which were quite nice with Japanese anemones, wisteria and some other familiar perrentials.
There was a summer house - really a sort of gazebo - and lots of wonderful stone walls. We only saw one or two rooms in the manor house. After we saw the Manor House, we tried to see one or two more things, but it didn't seem to work. We headed back to the main building to check on how to get the bus back.
This turned out to be more difficult than we anticipated. We waited for the last bus at 4:30 pm but the bus was late and we were standing waiting for quite a while with a whole bunch of other people, including lots of kids...as well as the chaotic family which was kind of pushy and two women started smoking at the bus stop with all the kids around. Next to us was a young woman in a long flowery dress with 4 young girls all dressed in the same blue flowered dress: 2 had long blonde hair and 2 with long brown hair - they could have been 2 sets of twins. Finally the bus came, Marilynn and I managed to get toward the front of the advancing crowd and we got seats. The bus took quite awhile to drive back to the city center. We thought we could recognize St Mary's Street and the Great Western Building and there they were! So we could easily find our way back to the aprtment.
We ate our left-overs for dinner and started on our various tasks. Marilynn now has a real estate program on TV. It is still relatively early - maybe I will catch up on another day's blog or upload the nikon photos tonight.
2025-05-22