The 21st Century is When Everything Changes...

HOLD EVERYTHING!

Even though I am a week behind updating you lovely people about my London shenanigans, I must update you on the spectacularness that was Sunday before I forget any of the details.

CARDIFF!!!

Or Caerdydd in Welsh. Welsh is a beautiful looking language by the by. Bws instead of bus. I mean, how cool is that? (And I totally just wrote that word from memory…I think I am beginning to learn Welsh! Yeah, that’s right, on my way to fluency because I remembered the word for bus. Don’t judge.) Look at all the consonants! And they are all ds and ws and cs and cws…please excuse me, my language nerd is showing.
Anyway, Cardiff and its wonder.

We had to wake up at an unearthly hour (actually, we woke up at 6:30…) and Shelagh, bless her, spared us the exhausting journey on the tube to Victoria Station by driving us there. We then dashed to the bus and spent a relaxing three hour drive to Cardiff and basically sang Glee songs and Chess the entire way there and watched a few clips of Doctor Who in preparation.

We were dropped off in front of the University of Cardiff by the bus and had a bit of a Hot Fuzz moment where the bus drove off and we were still standing there with dopey expressions on our faces (but lacking a Japanese peace lily, which was quite a shame). We set off to where my keenly trained senses told me where the bay was (I have an inherent Doctor Who detector, seriously. I knew where all the Doctor Who stuff was from any direction. Now that is a dead useful skill. If I ever get lost in the wilderness, move over Bear Grylls. I’ll do better than find my way out of the woods. I’ll find me a Doctor.)

We wondered into the city center and found the Cardiff National Museum (or something like that…I don’t remember the exact name, but you believed me that that’s what it was called because I capitalized it, yeah? The power of an English major with a power trip, mwa.) and saw a load of brilliant paintings (Monet, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, basically, a bunch of stolen stuff). We then asked the nice Welshman at the desk how to get to the bay and he told us the secrets of the Cardiff bus system (namely, you take Bus 6 to get to the bay…so not all that secret) and sent us on our way.

So, of course, even though we had directions, we didn’t follow them and decided to wander around until we found something we could use as a landmark. Namely, Cardiff Castle. Whoa. Good landmark. We vacillated between being cheap and being educated, chose intelligence, and wandered into the glorious castle grounds. It was my first castle, so I was inordinately excited and danced around the grounds offering to fake sword fight people and being decidedly dorkish about it. The audioguide was highly annoying, so Katie I spent a lot of time making fun of it in fake British accents, but of course, no one knew that was what we were making fun of and got some rather odd looks. Normal day, for us. We climbed the mighty stairs to the keep and made it all the way to the top to look on good Cardiff. Katie was looking at the pretty park next to us, while I was trying to find the Doctor Who Museum in the distance. No matter.

There was also a house on the grounds owned by the Butte Family (who apparently owned most of Cardiff, at some point) and another nice Welsh museum man told us a cool story about the keep and the dungeons of the castle and how some guy in charge had decided his brother should be extradited from France and imprisoned because that’s what all the cool nobles were doing at the time (there was more of a story to that, but I was too busy giggling at the fact that someone from the 19th century had mentioned that staying in one of the bedrooms was made of creep because it was like sleeping in a church. Which is awkward.) We then learned that people in the past were just as lazy as people in the future (i.e. now) and would put grape vines in the middle of the table that were composed of a contraption that would wind up and down so everyone could reach grapes without having to stand up. Well played, lazy Victorian Welsh people. Well played.

It was then time to figure out the bus system and travel down to the bay, which was beyond exciting for me, because that meant access to all things Doctor Who/Torchwood. We hopped on the bus, reveled in our distinctly Welsh-likeness for taking public transport, and traveled down to the bay area, surprisingly further than we anticipated.

And then, it was time.

Dun dun dun.

DOCTOR WHO MUSEUM: CARDIFF STYLE!

Best. Museum. Ever. (A/N: I’m totally having you on. It was marvelous, as you will soon discover, but I am currently sitting in a 18th-19th century courtyard at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the sun surrounded by rooms filled to bursting with Renaissance sculptures. Enough said.)

We saw everything I could possibly want to see. We saw David Tennant’s cream colored chucks. We saw the blue suit (GRR. Blue suit!). We saw an Ood. We saw Cybermen. We saw creepy clockwork creatures. We saw the Journal of Impossible Things. We saw Lady Christina de Souza’s outfit. We saw three Donna Noble outfits. We saw Captain Jack Harkness outfits. And of course, Daleks. Which I am happy to report, are much much MUCH creepier up close. I can see why everyone’s so panicked about them on the show. I pretty much displayed my nerd in a stunning show of gasps, scoffs, quotes and corrections of passerbys who obviously have not watched the show enough. Shame. Quite happily, I visited the gift shop, got a SIGNED James Marsters picture from his stint in Torchwood and the nice Welshman behind the counter pitied my inability to stand and read signs of things that I could have summarized better and with more detail for the quiz we were given through the museum and threw in a Doctor Who bumper sticker.

Thus high on life and British sci-fi television, we continued to Roald Dahl’s Plass and continued the magnificence. We found Torchwood in all its glory next to the Millenium Center, took our requisite pictures of being on the visitor’s entrance and then protected by the perception filter and made faces at random people as if we were invisible and talked about the technology necessary for said invisibility (that was for you, Robin!) I then used my keenly trained Doctor Who senses and wandered to the docks to find the actual entrance to Torchwood. We approached where I knew it was with some great confusion. Why on Earth, or anywhere else in the universe, for that matter, was there a bunch of weird postings in front of the entrance? And such a large group of random people?

We approached with some trepidation, but then I recognized it from some of my random internet wanderings in which I had heard that such a creation had existed, but had disregarded because I had never realized that Cardiff visiting was in my future.

And, I will tread carefully now, as this is a HUGE Torchwood Series 3 spoiler.

At best reckoning without being spoilery…it was a shrine. A HUGE IANTO SHRINE.

We had just found a shrine to a fictional character, a decorative piece of majesty decrying thousands of people’s love of Ianto Jones. It warms this writer’s heart.

After much rejoicing and dancing at how UNEXPECTEDLY AWESOME thousands of people are, we decided to make our own addition to the wall. And seriously, this trip has made me a huge believer in fate. To take you back a few weeks, I had drawn a bunch of Doctor Who cartoons when I should have been studying for calculus and had mounted them on construction paper and given them their place of honor on my dorm room door. When I was moving out, I didn’t want to lose them, so I put them somewhere safe. Somewhere I didn’t remember. Until I opened the one journal I brought to Cardiff and opened the little pouch in the back and realized they were all there. INCLUDING IANTO JONES. Fate, I tell you.

Now, we had promised (...er?) Nicole that we would attempt to get a lock of Ianto’s hair to commemorate her outstanding and eternal love of Ianto Jones. Sadly, we were unable to oblige. Instead, on our baby Ianto picture, we inscribed Nicole’s name (along with our own) with her love, forever to live on the Ianto Wall in Cardiff. I realize that there are many, many more of you who also have lots of love for Ianto, and we wanted to include you all, but it was a very teeny picture. Know that I thought of you while putting it up and made sure Ianto knew of your love as well.

The rest of the day was spent in relative relaxation, talking to more nice Welshmen and eating at a pub overlooking Roald Dahl’s Plass. Also, achieving a “when I turn 21…” goal of mine, I had my first Sex on the Beach. Which is a drink, you dirty minded people. Vodka, peach schnapps, CRANBERRY JUICE, and orange juice that when mixed together, turns the most obnoxious shade of pink I’ve ever seen. I think it was the girliest drink I’ve ever witnessed in existence, no less had. It was actually more fun ordering than it was drinking, though it was pretty good, I suppose. (I reverted back to scotch and whisky since being back in London, much less ridiculous and more delicious in my opinion). New goal: order a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster and have someone know what I’m talking about.

Final thought: University of Cardiff may be my new destination for grad school. Shockingly cheap (as grad schools go), in Cardiff, AND a creative writing MA. But then again, it’s Oxford this weekend…and yes, Hannah. I’m getting you a sweatshirt.

Anyway, cheers for now!