My 33rd week in England was the first one away from school and marked the start of a month full of traveling. I spent Monday discovering London’s colourful Camden Town spotting loads of – hm, how can I put this? – interesting people (yep, you can actually see people wearing underpants only :D). As I had brilliant weather, I also spent some time sitting next to Regent’s Canal, a lovely place for hanging out in the sun. Camden Town is a rather unusual place indeed … basically there’s tons of little stalls and shops where you can buy pretty much anything – from goth clothes to exotic food and there’s also quite a few shops with huge artwork on their roofs (planes, shoes etc. – see photos below). Oh, and it’s suuuuper crowded. But it’s London, so I guess that’s nothing special anyway. As I didn’t want to buy a ticket for the underground, I spent both Sunday and Monday walking. Alone. In a city with 8 million people, yeah, that’s right. But even though I’m terrible with directions, I found my way back to Derby thanks to a big street atlas. 😉
After this busy day in London, I joined my friend Connie whom I met while volunteering for FORMAT 13 for coffee at Derby’s QUAD on a terrible (= rainy) Tuesday and had my last rehearsal with Derby Bach Choir on Wednesday. Thursday marked my last chance to have another night out in Derby, so Naomi, Tasha and some other friends and myself went to Scream. Enough said I suppose.^^ Finally, Friday was my very last day in Derby. My friend Babs from South Tyrol picked me up in the morning and thus began our odyssey to Wales where we spent the weekend together. Even though Babs had a navigation system on her cell, finding our way to Caerphilly Castle (our first stop) wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be as she ran out of energy so we had to use a massive “analogue” map.^^ Anyway, after a six hour drive we finally arrived at Caerphilly, the second largest castle in the UK, where we had a short walk before heading to our hostel in Cardiff city centre. Friday evening was spent writing as Friday was the deadline for my field report on being a language assistant. Oh dear, almost missed the deadline, but fortunately I managed …
On Saturday, Babs and I drove all the way to St. Davids, Britain’s smallest city in the western part of Wales. Once again, we were lucky to have lovely weather and could explore St. Davids Cathedral, a very impressive building that’s supposed to be the largest cathedral in Wales. Its highlight: the tower ceiling – haven’t seen anything like this before! St. Davids itself is lovely, too, especially the coastal path next to the sea where we spent a few hours walking. Before heading back to Cardiff, we stopped at Rhossili Bay (near Swansea) to witness a beautiful sunset. A few minutes later and we would’ve missed it so we were really lucky. 🙂 So, it was a brilliant day I’d say, except for the fact that I broke my glasses while having ice cream. Oh well, fortunately there’s super glue.^^
On our last day in Wales we discovered Cardiff city centre, Cardiff Bay and some sweet shops (you can’t go to Wales without having Dragon Poo!) before heading back to Loughborough, where Babs and I had to say goodbye as I took the train to London. More on that next week … 🙂
Camden Town and Wales caught on camera:
