New post, with one more boss!

Frequent readers might remember that right around the first weekend in June each year, the daughter comes over to go to a metal festival in Nuremberg. She usually either stays a week or so afterward, or comes over a week or so early, and we do a random European trip with her. Last year was Copenhagen - this year, she wanted to go to the UK.

The day she landed was a German holiday, so the boss and I both went to pick her up. We didn't do anything else that day (everything was closed anyway); we wanted to give her a chance to rest before we started dragging her all over the place. The next day was a work day, so the boss went off to pay the bills, mini-boss and I hit a drink market and a couple of game stores.

We took the subway to the airport the next day (the 27th) and flew to Heathrow. Our previous trips to London (either as a destination or layover), we've taken either a cab or an Uber - this time, we decided to take the train. Uneventful journey (thankfully).

We found our hotel easily enough, a Four Points by Sheraton. As I've mentioned before, we've found that we prefer to stay in American chains, as we generally know how our stay will be.

This bit us in the ass a couple of times on this trip.

We got 2 rooms at this hotel, a double for us, and a single for the mini-boss. The rooms were quite small - Cori's room was scarcely bigger than her bed - she said it was quite cozy. I'm not claustrophobic, but after staying in her room, I might have been. The air conditioning worked fine in both of our rooms - as we've come to expect in American chains over here.

The next day, we headed over to the British Museum to see some of the artifacts that somehow ended up there (rather than their home countries). After taking my history class last semester, I was especially excited to see artifacts from Alexander the Great. Prior to my class, I'd heard his name, but knew little to nothing about him. Saw a bunch of stuff from his time, saw the Rosetta Stone (named after the software program, I guess?), and walked through the ancient Egyptian area. I guess I'm a bit torn - while I'd prefer that all of these wonderful artifacts were returned to their homeland, it was nice being able to see these amazing objects from all over the middle east and Macedonia without having to be around all that sand. It was my third visit to the British Museum, and honestly, I'd go back again and again - their collection is IMMENSE.

We took the tube to Westminster and took the requisite pics of Elizabeth Tower, I mean Big Ben. Wandered through Westminster Abbey - the boss and I went through there on our previous trip, but I paid a lot more attention to the graves and memorials this time, actually reading about Poet's Corner, spending some time looking over the monument for Sir Isaac Newton... 

The boss wanted to see the Horse Guard outside of Buckingham Palace, so we headed in that direction. We found a little street with a bunch of food booths and stopped to have lunch. Didn't find anything at the booths that interested us, so we stopped in a nearby pub (The Grafton Arms, if you're wondering) for a quick bite.

Finished lunch and headed to Buckingham Palace... to find that that's not where the Horse Guards are. Turns out, they's right down the street from Westminster Abbey. So... we walked back in that direction and found them.

Interestingly enough (to me, at least... and since you're reading this, you get to learn something too!). The building is called Horse Guards. The field behind the building is called Horse Guard Parade. The horses aren't actually stabled there though - they're stabled in a dorm in Hyde Park, a few blocks away. Horse Guard used to be the stable, and still fulfills some administrative work. For historic reasons, it's guarded by the King's Life Guards - the familiar Beefeaters. For specific hours through the day, two mounted guards stand in front of the building, then the posts are taken over by regular Beefeaters. Luckily, we happened by while the horses were still there.

We split up and all headed in different directions afterward. The boss wanted to go to Kensington Palace, mini-boss headed back to her cell, and I tubed over to the gaming store I visited last time we were in town. Cori walked back to the hotel, and I tubed (once I was done with the game store). I think the boss tubed as well, but am really not sure. We walked to a local "smash-burger" place for dinner.

Next morning, we checked out and walked to the bus terminal for our bus to Cardiff. We waited in the wrong place for a few minutes, but course corrected and made it in plenty of time. The bus to Cardiff was uneventful. 

Most signs in Wales are in two languages: English and Gibberish Welsh

Seriously, these people need to buy a vowel.

Downtown Cardiff isn't huge, so we just walked through town to our hotel, the downtown Marriott. Turns out, the air conditioning was out in the entire building. I had packed my portable fan, so it was bearable, but still a bit too warm in the room. It would cool down a bit at night, so we'd have the window open with the fan propped in it to cool the room down a bit, but remember - good air conditioning is one of the reasons we typically stay in American chains.

Turns out, there's a Costco in Cardiff, so we booked an Uber over there, wandered around, and ate dinner at the food court. Interestingly enough, the prices were "identical" to prices in the states (if you ignore the exchange rate) - a hot dog combo was £1,50 (which converts to $2.00 at today's exchange rate). Interesting to me, anyway. You should have known what you were in for when you clicked the link!

We Ubered back to the hotel and wandered around downtown for a little while.

Next day, we had a full day tour booked, so we left in the morning and walked over to meet our driver, Max.

There were about 10-12 others on our tour bus. We piled in and took off across the beautiful countryside. First stop was a beach called Barry Island.

Interestingly enough (again, with the normal caveat - interestingly enough to me!), Barry Island isn't an island, and hasn't been one since the 1870s when the town of Barry expanded and the docks connected the island to the mainland. It's a sleepy little beach town with the second highest tidal range in the world, at 15 meters (49 Freedom Units). That's second only to the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada - in case you're interested.

Barry Island was evidently the setting for a popular BBC sitcom in the '80s called "Gavin & Stacey" - as such, all of the little beach stores had t-shirts and merchandise from the show for sale, along with the standard things you'd find in little beach stores.

Next stop was Nash Point, site of Nash Point Lighthouse, dating to 1831. The ladies went for a walk with Max across the field, I hung out near the snack shop and tried to make friends with the sheep who were grazing nearby. Spoiler alert: they didn't want anything to do with me.

Next stop was (the remains of) Ogmore Castle, with construction dating back to 1106. Quite picturesque, but essentially just a field of ruins now. Ladies got some halfway decent pictures, if you like that kind of stuff.

The River Ewenny runs behind the castle, with a set of stepping stones running across it. There were quite a few visitors in the area that day, at one point there was a line to use the stepping stones. There was a field nearby where some horses were grazing. Mini-boss especially liked when a local took a horse into the pasture - it pranced around happily, then threw itself on the ground to... take a break, I guess? She still giggles when she relates the story, and insisted that I include it (and the accompanying picture).

Honestly, he'd just finished cavorting around the field and just threw himself down on the grass - he's not dead, I promise!

The final stop on the tour was a city (town?) called Caerphilly. Across the river was the requisite Welsh castle, but evidently this one's pretty important.

There's been a fort of some sort in the town dating back to 75 AD, when the Romans built a fort there during their conquest of Britain. Caerphilly was occupied by the Romans until the middle of the second century. 

The castle was built between the years of 1268 and 1300. It's evidently the largest castle in Wales, and the second largest in the United Kingdom - only Windsor Castle is larger. It's significant for its architecture - picture a traditional castle in your mind, surrounded by imposing stone walls. Some castles have another (higher) set of walls inside those outer walls, creating an inner and outer ward within the castle, where multiple layers of defenders can defend the castle from different elevations. Those castles are called concentric castles, and this particular castle introduced that concept to the British.

As a little aside, I was doom-scrolling upon our return and came upon a story about a bumbling British comedian/magician whose bit was tricks that didn't work all the time. He unfortunately suffered a heart attack during a performance and the audience thought it was a part of his act, laughing uproariously as he collapsed on stage. Now that I've brought the mood down, now I'll tell you how this relates to the blog entry...

While wandering around Caerphilly, I encountered a statue of a gentleman wearing a fez. I had no reason to recognize him - I figured he was a famous native of the town. Imagine my surprise a couple of days later to encounter the story of Tommy Cooper, one of the most famous British comedian/magicians in history, who dropped dead on stage in front of a live audience in 1984. Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins unveiled the statue, wearing one of Tommy Cooper's trademark fezes, and did a bumbling comedy routine in Tommy's honor.

After our tour, we wandered back through town and stimulated the local economy. Instead of heading straight back to the hotel, we wandered around downtown. It was late afternoon, but we were struck by how much the city felt like Nashville. It seemed like the whole downtown area was just a big pedestrian area, with people spilling out of restaurants and bars into the streets. It occurred to us that we might want to get reservations at a restaurant for dinner, so we headed back to the hotel room to regroup and decide where we wanted to go. The management team stopped for a beer, and I headed directly back. 

We'd passed a barbecue restaurant the day before, but after checking their menu, it seemed like barbecue was a bit of an afterthought, so we kept searching... and found another one, so we made reservations there instead. I can highly recommend Spitfire Barbecue in Cardiff - any time you find yourself there, you should check it out.

The city had gotten more active since we'd headed back to the room, with armies of bachelorette parties flooding the streets. I stopped counting at 10 different parties - and that was just on the way to dinner.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel. While packing for this trip, we decided to just take carry-ons, so I had to pare down some of the normal things that I travel with. I luckily had still packed my battery operated fan, but my bag full of extra cables didn't make the cut. Unfortunately, none of us had the proper kind of cable, and with the air conditioning being out, my fan was getting more use than normal. I ran out to get the right cable from a convenience store across the street from the hotel, and as soon as I left of the hotel it was like walking into a street party.

I found the right cable and waited in line behind a drunk group of girls - one of them turned and saw me patiently waiting and struck up a conversation. When it came out that I was from the states, she got quite excited and ran out into the street to get one of her other friends - it was almost like she was on a mission to find all of the Americans and insure that they'd been introduced to each other.

We talked for a few minutes, turns out we'd lived in a couple of the same (general) places - she was from right outside Seattle (where I lived for a while), and had moved there from Pflugerville, with a couple year pit stop in Nashville. Turns out, the drunk Welsh gal might have been onto something!

We got notification that night that our bus back to London the following day had been canceled. Luckily, our tickets would be valid for the next bus (a couple of hours after our original departure), so we reserved seats and all was well... or was it?

There was some confusion with our seat reservations; we'd reserved two seats in the second row on one side of the bus and the seat across the aisle. We took our seats and all was well... until someone took the window seat next to me. That started a little bit of a chain reaction. Turns out, she wasn't sure what seat she was supposed to be in, and thought she could just take any available seat. This caused everyone near us to check their seat assignments, and the ladies and I were backwards; we started to swap sides... but the punk-ish looking gal (pink hair, tattoos and all) who was (now) sitting next to me was travelling with someone sitting across the aisle in the first row (another punk-ish looking gal, if you're interested). I share the punk description in the interest of passing along all of the information, not as any kind of judgement... you do you, boo! I offered to switch seats with the punk in the first row, so they could sit together, and all was well, except that the gentleman in the window seat happened to be wearing (of all things!) a Bears jersey - Justin Fields, if I remember correctly - and I happened to be wearing a Packers Shareholder t-shirt that day. We fought it out for a while until, bloody and battered, we rode in silence the remaining way to London. Just kidding - his friend had given him the jersey and he admitted that he couldn't pick a "hand egg" out of a lineup. He dozed and I watched shows I'd downloaded to my phone for the trip.

Since there were three of us, the hotel put us into one of their larger rooms, and told us that the air conditioner in the room wasn't keeping the room cool specifically because of the size of the room. Turns out, none of the air conditioners in the rooms in the hotel were working well, regardless of the size of the room. How do I know? They gave us a portable air conditioning unit to use in the room. It wasn't an air conditioner that I was familiar with though - there was a little bucket built into the top of the unit that we had to keep filling with ice. I saw people from several other rooms bringing their air conditioning units down to the lobby to get them filled with ice. I used one of the recycling bins in our room as an ice bucket instead, and just took that down to get ice when the machine needed to be refilled. One other thing I learned about those kind of air conditioners: they don't have any effect whatsoever on the temperature of the room. We had one more day of touring ahead of us, and would be flying out the following day, so that night we decided to pivot for the remainder of our stay.

The boss chatted with the front desk folks through the Marriott app on her phone (partially so they'd see her status) if we could cancel our next night's stay because of the air conditioner situation, and they agreed to cancel our reservation for the following night - we made reservations for the next night at the Marriott out at Heathrow, where hopefully the air conditioning would work better (or at all).

The next day, we got all packed up and checked out of the hotel, and put our luggage into storage lockers in the lobby, then headed out to explore.

First stop was the famed Burroughs Market... which, it turns out, is closed on Mondays. The plan for that day was taking shape nicely, I think we can all agree.

We continued walking on the banks of the Thames and showed Mini-Boss the Tower Bridge and London Bridge as we passed by. When the boss and I first visited London, we'd seen the Globe Theatre but hadn't stopped, so we headed in that direction. On the way, the ladies stopped into Southwark Cathedral. I didn't go in, but it's evidently quite historical.

The church itself dates back to 1106... or maybe much earlier - no one is quite sure. There might have been a nunnery there dating back to the year 606, founded by a maiden named Mary, using the profits from a ferry business she'd inherited from her parents. A little while later, it was supposedly converted to a college of priests by "Swithen, a noble lady." I think a "college of priests" is different from a seminary - as near as I can tell, "college" is a term for a group of priests, like "herd" is a group of cows. Also, it turns out that Noble Lady Swithen might have been a man, Swithen the Bishop of Winchester from 852 to 863. I'll ask the Pope about all of this the next time I talk to him.

Regardless, from 1106 (or earlier) until the 1530s it functioned as some kind of nunnery or priory, when, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII it became a parish church. It was evidently the first gothic church in London.

Evidently, there's a cat named Hodge there who actually "runs" the place (as cats are wont to do)... so of course the Mini-Boss captured pictures of him. Even the gift shop in the cathedral has Hodge merchandise.

We wandered around the Globe a bit, didn't take a tour, just walked through the lobby and the gift store. Not gonna tell you all about the Globe, other than that the current building is a reconstructed version of the original 1599 version of Shakespeare's Globe, and not the cheesy replica built in 1615. 

We continued walking along the Thames, eventually making our way to the London Eye. Checked the box, took the pictures.

Afterward, we made our way back to the hotel, stopping at the Waterloo Pub near Burroughs Market along the way for a pint.

We collected our luggage from the hotel and ordered an Uber to the airport Marriott. As soon as we checked in, we cranked the air conditioner down to "deep freeze," and were thankfully almost able to see our breath.

We took an Uber to the airport the next day... and that concludes our UK trip with the Mini-Boss.