UK 2013 Day 11 Cardiff

Day 11 - Tuesday, June 18 2013: Cardiff, Wales
For our last full day we looked at our original plans and had to make a decision: did we go back to Cardiff and try to see Cardiff Castle, or did we pull out one of our Plan B's?  After talking a bit with our host, Brian, we went with Plan B.  One of the options that didn't make our original touring list was St. Fagans National Museum of History, which is an open air museum "chronicling the historical lifestyle, culture, and architecture of the Welsh people" (thanks Wikipedia).  Basically, it is a collection of roughly 40 buildings from a wide variety of time periods that have been moved and reconstructed/restored at St. Fagans.

An example of one of the older, more rustic buildings.  This is an 18th C pig sty.

There was a small farm onsite, with (at least) pigs and turkeys, plus geese like these.

One of the larger buildings was this 1917 Workmans Institute.  Also on this same square was a recreated general store that was quite interesting.

There was a group of girls inside this 1880 schoolhouse who were involved in a docent-led scenario.  Here, the girl in pink was being harangued by the "school mistress".

Regrettably, I didn't get a photo of the 19th century men's urinal, but some of the other buildings were interesting.  Several of the buildings had docents in them available to answer questions, and one of the house even had a wood fire going.  We spent a lot of time in the gift shop trying to find "the thing".  A friend at home had hinted we'd find something amusing, but hadn't told us what it was.  Instead, she'd simply said "you'll know what I'm talking about when you find it."  We spent about 30 minutes searching around without anything leaping out.  Later, upon returning home, it turned out that the friend wasn't talking about the St. Fagans gift shop, but that shop at another attraction that we didn't end up going to.

We did eat lunch at St Fagans, in a typical non-descript cafeteria.  During lunch I spent a lot of time on my phone trying to get us checked into our flight the next morning.  An elderly gentleman came up to the table to lightly admonish me for ignoring my family, although when I explained that I was actually doing something both necessary and productive (and wasn't just web surfing) he understood.

To round out our day we ended up going to Techniquest in Cardiff.  This is a science museum in the mold of the Exploratorium, and it delivered the full interactive, hands-on experience that we hadn't had at the Science Museum in London earlier in the trip.  I don't recall how to stumbled on Techniquest.  It is possible that Brian had suggested it to us that morning, particularly in light of the boys' ages.  However we ended up there we had a great time.  It was a nice touch of modern times after so many days of history, and we ended up spending about 3 hours there, finishing up around 4PM or so.

Robert and Doug use small magnets to move a large weight.

Oh no!  Where's Robert's body?!?

Andrew gets into the middle of a sound exhibit.

One of our favorites.  Most of the exhibits can be found at the San Francisco Exploratorium, but this one showing a standard bell curve distribution was something we'd never seen before.  The orange balls fell from the top, bouncing around in what was essentially a giant Pachinko machine, before settling in one of the large tubes.

From there we all decided that we had had our fill of restaurants, and we determined to make use of our kitchenette and have a "home cooked" meal.  So we found a grocery in Cardiff and ended up picking up some pasta and sauce, salad, and bread.  We took this back to The Snug and cooked up dinner to enjoy around the dining table.  We discovered that the pots and pans and utensils weren't the cleanest, since they were clearly handwashed by prior occupants.  We did some pre-cleaning, and then cleaned up nicer than the prior occupants after dinner.

Preparing our "gourmet" home-cooked meal on our last night in the UK.

Finally, it was time to settle our bill, which led to a bit more excitement than we would have liked.  It never entered my mind that Brian wouldn't be set up to take a credit card.  He's cash or check only, which he'd failed to mention when we made the original booking.  Well, we hadn't brought our checkbook, so we ended up scrambling into the car and went off trying to find a compatible ATM from which to withdraw cash.  We ended up trying 3 different places before concluding that our ATM card wasn't configured to allow use overseas.  Running around was pretty stressful, because we'd left the boys to sleep while we went out and tried not to get lost.  Finally had to slink back empty-handed, at which point Brian gave me his banking info so I could wire him money once we got home.