This was all of our gear... It was quite a challenge fitting all of that, PLUS us in the tiny little Kia Cee'd. But somehow, we managed! I would say that it was pretty amazing!
Roy and I hopped into Sadie's car (gorgeous little Pattsy the Peugeot) and the others hopped into Clare's car and we were off on our drive to Cardiff, Wales.
The Severn bridge.
I'd pictured in my head this looooong drive to a different country but was pleasantly surprised when we arrived in about two hours. It's still such a strange concept to be able to cross borders to a different country in two hours. If we drove two hours from Brisbane we would get to...... Noosa... wow..
It's so cool in Wales, they have dual language signs! It was fun trying to read the Welsh. We were making a fool out of ourselves because the letters look the same as English but some of them make different noises to what we're used to, so I think we were saying them TOTALLY wrong.
Anyway, so we arrived in a nice little suburb in Cardiff where Sadie's Mum lives. We all piled out of the cars and prepared to meet the new relatives. It's been a long running joke amongst us that we were going to be the giants going to meet Sadie's short family. I hope they weren't too overwhelmed by us crazy, noisy giants who I might add were on our best behaviour. The five of us travelling companions (Me, Roy, Roy's parents and Kate, Roy's younger sister) got to know the ins and outs of each other after living in close quarters for the past week so we were quite comfortable with each other which led to a bit of rowdiness at times. We did however tone it down a bit for the new meeting :)
We were welcomed into their lovely home and we quickly settled in for the weekend. When Clare had told us that they'd organised for us to stay the night at Sadie's Mum's place I thought, "hhrmmm how are they going to fit all of us giant people in their house for the night?" but to my surprise they were extremely well equipped to have us for the night. Bodies were scattered everywhere throughout their three-storey house. Some in bedrooms, some in the lounge room and some on blow up mattresses, but all were very comfortably looked after.
That afternoon, Sadie took us into Cardiff to show us around the bay. I've got to say, I was rather impressed with the lovely city. It was very clean, beautiful and we were very fortunate to have perfect weather for the afternoon.
The silver "thing" is actually usually a fountain in Roald Dahl Plass. Roald Dahl Plass was named after the Author... as you can probably guess and Plass means "plaza" in Norwegian.
A dragon on the outside of the Council building.
A rather short door?
We stopped into the Norwegian Church cafe and had our first try of a Welsh cake - which, I might add, was probably my favourite thing to eat on the trip (they are covered in sugar after all). After a nice sit in the cafe, we had a good look in the visitors information centre where we learnt a few things about the place. Cardiff Bay experiences one of the world's greatest tidal ranges - up to 14m. CRAZY!
So, after our great tour of Cardiff, we headed back to Sadie's Mum's place where we were greeted by her brother and his family. We had a lovely night sharing stories of our different cultures and having a good chuckle at the funny things that Sadie's nephew did. He entertained us by rocking out to the music that was playing. He had a favourite track on one of the CD's and whenever it played, he stopped what he was doing and started dancing along to it. So cute!
After some lovely dessert, Sadie's brother and his family left because by that time the kids were exhausted - as were we - so we all headed to bed for some shut-eye.
After a nice nights sleep we were treated to a lovely spread of breakfast (probably one of the best from the whole trip). Sadie's Mum had a huge array of various cereals, fruits, juices, yoghurts, beverages and she had even heated croissants up for us. As you might say in Wales... "It was lush!"
After our lovely morning feast, we headed over to Sadie's Dad's place and had morning tea (coffee and plenty of tasty flapjacks!) and a good chat about rugby (Sadie's Dad used to play Rugby and is an avid fan). We also learnt some more about Cardiff and heard a few stories about Sadie when she was growing up.
We had a great weekend seeing where Sadie grew up and meeting her lovely family! If only we had a little more time to continue exploring Wales. One weekend just didn't do it justice!
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