Compounding our issues with the train line being worked on was that Caby's family car decided to die the moment I showed up. (Listen, I didn't just bring destruction with me—it pissed the day before I showed up and then was bright and sunny the entire three weeks I was there.) As such, if we wanted to go into town, we had to find our own way in.
(This page is gonna lean pretty heavily on the Cardiff Suburbs and Downtown Cardiff galleries over on cabycammy.somnol—remember, only a handful of the photos I took on the trip went into this trip diary, so browse the rest there!)
The day started around noon (as they often do), us wandering past Caby's old high school and into the park. There was a trail down to a rocky, watery edge opposite the Blackweir Bridge (according to Cramble, Caby's brother, neither of us could identify it). It was fun dinking around down there though! We also found what looked to be an old campfire someone made in a little natural nook in the path.
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Past the dam, along the river, there was a trail to somewhere neither of us had been before, and with nothing better to do, we just decided to walk until we hit something. Along the way was a lot of forest and chest-high stone walls, but that's a vibe all on its own.
Soon, though! We hit a parking lot and some university buildings, and we'd made it into town, all without the trains or a car. (Thankfully, their car got resuscitated and limped along for a few more weeks before finally giving up the ghost, so we were able to use that instead to get into town going forwards. Saved us a lot of wear and tear on our legs.)
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While we didn't get the proper tour of Cardiff Castle, you can freely walk into the grounds and have a look around. It was a nice, overcast day, really the ideal weather for castle gawking, isn't it? We also stopped in an adjacent touristy kinda shop to pick up a plushie Welsh dragon for my folks back home (I'd get another on day fifteen).
We were highly tempted by the largest dragons, but the logistics of getting it home kept us from buying them.
So far, nothing too spectacular, but gamers—quite literally, gamers—the best was to come.
Have you ever heard of CEX? It's kind of legendary in the group now, and Caby was keen to take me there because she knew how much I'd like it. On paper, it's a pretty typical game trade-in shop with other media and electronics on offer too (including some nice-looking audio gear), but there's not only plenty of retro games at hand (we're talking PC, PS2, DS, 3DS, and 360, with a few selected NES/Master System/SNES/N64/PS1 titles in a case up by the register), but they go for absurdly low prices. I was in actual shock going through this place. Big name, classic PC games going for anywhere from 50p to £4. Apparently this place gets picked clean quick, and it's really not hard to see why.
Caby and I raided the PC games. I took home the first Sims, the Hot Date expansion for it, Doom 3 (with which there was a mild scare—we thought we were missing a disc, but the guy at the counter looked it up and found it does only come on three CDs), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and this hilariously cheap looking Pac-Man PC game thing for Windows 98 with some absolutely hideous boxart. It's called PacMax Classics if you want to look it up, and they were letting it go for 50p. The laugh alone is worth the 50p. Caby also got a copy of The Sims and a copy of Morrowind, at £2.50. (Morrowind! At £2.50!)
In total, we spent £16, her £6.50, me £9.50, the most expensive thing in the lot being the two copies of The Sims. Bonkers haul. This wouldn't be the last time the trip we'd visit CEX, and there's no way we're not going back next time I'm in town. (Note that I left my games behind at Caby's house to be shipped to me at home at a later date. I'm not really picky about when, so long as they're safe and haven't gotten lost in the mail or something.)
We got Jollibees to celebrate. That photo was taken at our booth.
All the walking had done a number on us. Caby got a blister from her boots, and we needed to take breaks every twenty minutes or so to recharge. We went home a different way, got some drinks at McDonald's, and settled down to not go outside for another couple days again. Very good day, though. Good times.