Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Day 11 - Geekiness factor: over 9000!

Hello from the Torchwood 3 hub everyone!

That's right, I'm in Cardiff today. Awesometastic! I know, right?

View My English World in a larger map

So this morning, I was woken up by my next door neighbor at 3:30am, an hour before my alarm was to go off and I couldn't get back to sleep between then and my departure time so I triple checked my packing and called Nina to get her up a little early. Our taxi picked us up at 5:15 and we were on the train just after 6 and on our way. 

After a brief stop in Birmingham, with hot chocolate and croissants, we were on the train to Cardiff. 

Nina pointed out almost every livestock we passed ("oooo sheep!"/"*gasp* a cow!"/"tee hee, a horse!") and I slept most of the way there. Terrible pain in my neck, but worth every moment.

When we arrived we had coffee to rouse us and then went off and explored Cardiff Castle. It's quite impressive. They include a free audio guide in your ticket and I listened to pretty much all of it. I kept running around exploring the nooks and crannies, it was so fun!

I got some souvenirs and gifts from the gift shop; Nothing big, but enough. One thing I got myself was a small beanie baby Welsh Dragon, so now he'll watch over me from my dorm shelf.

After that we walked down to the Millennium Centre and we saw the Doctor Who exhibit. It was fantastic! Well worth it! It needs a bit of an update now that we're onto the 11th Doctor, but still excellent! Unfortunately my extra set of batteries died part way through the museum so I couldn't take any photos except with my cellphone.... It must have been the Tardis' perception filter messing with my electronics... I also grabbed a map of filming locations around Cardiff from there; very cool!

Then we actually went over to the Millennium Centre itself. I had Nina take my picture of me standing on the Torchwood Hub's invisible lift. BECAUSE I'M JUST THAT AWESOME! DON'T DOUBT IT! Then we walked down Roald Dahl Plas and to the wharf, where I found something I didn't even know existed:

A memorial to Ianto Jones!

XD <-- Me = happiest geek in the World!

It was so great! Absolutely hilarious! It's over the door they use occasionally on the show as well, which made it all the better. But some of the messages were so well done. One person printed off a few comic strips of Jack and Ianto from Deviant Art. 

This was one of them: 

FANTASTIC!

After all that we then walked up to our Hostel. My knee gave out part way through that walk, really badly actually. But I was surprised it had lasted that long! Normally it gives out at 12000 steps maximum, but this time it lasted well into 17000! (Grand total by end of day: 31,094 o.O) 

Our hostel wasn't where Google maps claimed it was, but we still found it because I'm awesome. It was really quite nice, the internet was a little annoying and expensive, but I only used it to see if I could talk to Jon at all so I wasn't on very long. We had a beautiful dorm with 3 bunk beds, and it was Nina and I and two other women in the dorm. Oliver was stuck by himself in a full dorm of snoring guys, but ours was quite nice.

Then we decided to walk down to a pub we'd past for dinner, but when we got in, it was drinking room only. So we grabbed a pint to fortify ourselves against the walk ahead to the next pub down, but then when I went for the bathroom I discovered there was a restaurant just on the other side of the door the whole time! Unfortunately by then the kitchen was closed, but they gave us some food recommendations. After considering Subway or pizza, we wound up eating at a mildly overpriced Indian place. Their butter chicken was way too sweet (there were actually still granules of sugar in it...) but it was tasty none the less. When we were done, we had them call us a cab because I could not walk all the way back to the hostel with my knee that bad.

But now, sleeeeee... zzzZZZZzzzzZZZZzz.....