Wales Trip!

Hubby has 3 conferences this month and they're all in England.
We decided we would join him for the second one because one of his colleagues from Canada was planning on being there, but at last minute he wasn't able to get there.
The conference we went to was only 4 days long and in Cardiff, Wales.
I have never been to England before, with the exception of a stop over in Heathrow Airport (London) - so this was super exciting for me!  (And what if I saw a Royal?!)

Well, Wales rains everyday for at least five minutes and multiple times a day...sometimes it's drizzle, sometimes it's a lot of rain and sometimes - it's a downpour.
I'm sure the babies there are born with rain coats, splash pants, rain boots and an umbrella!

The signs in Welsh were amazing...they were a mix of letters that made absolutely no sense to me (thankfully the English translation was included!) and I now understand why people say Welsh can be a tricky language!

What to pack when traveling to Wales:

• Rain boots or sandals if you don't mind your feet being wet!  If you intend to do a lot of walking about - good foot wear is a must!
• A good rain coat that is not only water proof but warm!
• A good camera - mine finally kicked the bucket while I was there, so I don't have many photos and had to resort to a cell phone while there (blegh).
• UK plug converter...no, your North American/EU one (or other country) will not fit :).
• An empty suit case for all the goodies you buy at Pound Land or Pound World...and it's not full of things that will fall apart after using them once or twice!! There were brand named items and even the non-brand name stuff (i.e. children socks as we forgot to bring some!) were pretty decent quality!

We stayed at the Church Guest House, which was a nice 10-15 minutes walk from the downtown area.  The host, Andrew, was very friendly and nice and gave us lots of tips on where to visit while we were there.

However, there are some pit falls to the Church Guest House that maybe one travelling with little family members should know about:

• There is a continental breakfast included (cereal, fruit, nuts, yoghurt and hot toast with jam/butter, and tea/coffee or juice) but they do not have high chairs or booster seats...(yet they have a play pen? Keep reading...)
• We stored our stroller in the breakfast dining room and just kept our children there while we had breakfast the first morning.
• A hot breakfast is available at extra cost, but we found it cheaper to eat at local pubs/caf�s for breakfast.
• It's ideal to let the staff know that your child has any kind of condition that may cause them to be louder "than the average child".  Guests above us had complained that our son was too loud - and yes, he did yell quite a bit, and we tried our hardest (covering his mouth, letting him watch Cars a million times, playing his favourite Youtube channel all night, Simplynoise.com - ANYTHING to calm him down) to keep the noise to a minimum at night time - but sometimes crap happens.
  When I advised Andrew that our son has Autism and that we are trying our hardest - he understood and I assume - advised the guests above us - so they knew we weren't trying to make their vacation a horrible time...we didn't have any more complaints after that.
• Hot water in the shower didn't last long - hubby took a 10 minute shower maximum - and I didn't have any hot water after him...and when you turn on the hot water, you have to wait a bit for it to kick in...like brush your teeth then the water is hot enough.
• Bring your own shampoo and body wash - or pick some up at the Pound shop - the samples in the bathroom were kind of small for 4 of us and my hair just didn't feel clean after...but that's personal choice!

• The mattresses are approximately 2 weeks old (as of our travel dates of June 12-17, 2013) and they are not protected by mattress protection covers.  
• We found this out the hard way, when our 3.5 year old leaked out of his diaper due to stress of a new environment and travel (he is Autistic) - and despite peeling the blankets back, the smell of urine and the wet hand towel (that we used to soak up his mess) left on the bathroom floor intentionally so it could be changed - it wasn't.  We ended up stripping the bed the next day and putting ALL the towels on the floor with the bed sheets and were happy to see everything was changed the following day.  (We also did not file a complaint in person in case you are wondering - but did find it quite gross - even though the bed sheet and mattress were dry that night).
• When we did strip the bed, the host advised us that the mattresses were less than 2 weeks old and that they would have to be cleaned.  Of course, I agree and would be willing to pay the fee (but we were never advised of any additional fees - despite seeing the host every day at some point) - but I am curious if the mattresses are so new - why aren't there protection covers??  I mean - mattresses are expensive and these were super comfortable ones too!  I would want mine to last a long time - especially when a new person sleeps on it every day or week...
• We were issued a play pen for the child who peed (since we have two - I guess they assumed it was the younger one who did it?) the bed and we just kept it folded up in the corner - because there was no way a 3.5 (almost 4!) year old was going to fit in that play pen...let alone stay in it without making a fuss.
• Some things to also consider when having people sleep on a mattress (with a bed sheet) and no protection covers: 
• Sweat can soak through and stink up a mattress easily.
• Dirt - enough said.
• Flu/Viruses/Colds - think coughing, snot, leaky nose, sweating from chills...usually happens when one goes on vacation!
• Pee - not just little kids that wet the bed.
• Poop - same deal.
• Blood - nose bleed, menstrual cycles, miscarriages, scrapes and bumps, cracked feet...
• Sex - let's face it - it's a B&B and people go on honeymoons and vacations and anniversary trips and if the mood strikes - well...sex is just as dirty as pee.
• Bed bugs...

Those are just some things to consider as I said - but really, the Church Guest House (it's not religious inside - no worries if you're not religious yourself) is a lovely place, the staff friendly and the place in a good location (there was a big playground about 10 minutes the opposite direction from downtown).
We would definitely go back - without children (mostly because they are fighters and travelling with kids can be quite difficult for us!).

Onto the rest of Wales.

We enjoyed "proper English breakfasts" (my photos from my phone will be transferred to Pinterest at some point this week...) which consisted of:

• Fried eggs
• Toast
• Baked beans
• Tomato and mushroom (depends where you go)
• Hash browns (so greasy and crispy and delicious...)
• Welsh bacon (not the skinny pieces you get in the shops - but nice wide chunks of bacon...salty and smokey ....and doesn't have a parallel chunk of blubbery fat attached to it)
• Sausages
• English tea of course!

We managed to explore Wales a bit and got on a train to Caerphilly to explore the castle there.  It was nice and big, lots of landscape and geese!
But in the shop - no post cards...tsk tsk.

One restaurant we ate at was "The Golden Corner" in Cardiff.
Food was tasty but there were a couple pit falls to eating there:

1. Cash only.
2. The menu said we would get 3 sticky rice (wrapped in lotus leaves - a Dim Sum specialty) and we only got 2 for some reason.
3. I asked our waitress twice for a glass of ice water (since I planned on eating some dumplings with chili sauce) and she never brought it.  So I ended up going to the counter and asking for it myself...

Definitely check out The Works book shop!  They had a huge 80% off sale when I was there and I ended up scoring 2 knitting books for 3 and 2� each...and it turned out they were a lot more expensive on Amazon or Book Depository!

So if you ever get the chance - definitely pop into Wales!