June 23, 2023

📍Salisbury, Bristol, & Cardiff, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧

Ticket to ride: Our quick train tour around England.

Day 1: We woke up early (shocking, yes) and had breakfast at Wetherspoons, which is a chain diner in England and the quality is subpar at best. It’s cheap and quick and we do love that. We were in Salisbury to go to Stonehenge so after our below average breakfast, we went to the bus stop and took an hour trip to see the rocks.

We arrived, saw the rocks, walked around a bit, and that was it! It was impressive to think about how people moved them, but if I’m going to be honest, it was a bit underwhelming. Overall, worth seeing but don’t need to go back. After a quick day trip, it was time to get back on the bus, grab lunch, and then go to the hotel to get our bags. After thinking about people lifting multiple ton rocks, our bags didn’t seem so bad.

Our mission was complete and we were off to the next stop: lunch in town and then a train to Bristol.

We arrived in Bristol pretty late and we got to our hostel, The Full Moon, which was unlike any other hostel we stayed in. It was actually a bar that just had rooms attached. Convenient if you get too drunk, I suppose. We put our stuff in our room and went to the bar to grab some food and play trivia. One of the two plans went well. The food: good. The trivia: all British info (and I hardly know America trivia) so, not so good.

We ate, gave up on trivia, and went back to our room. Not only was the hostel just a few rooms away from the bar, but the entrance to our private room was about 3 feet tall and we are not short people.

Day 2: We began our day at a food market which is quite frankly my favorite way to start any day. We found a place with paella and we shared a delicious lunch.

We walked around the city, found some cool buildings, saw some wall art, and made it to a museum. Spoiler alert: there are no pictures of the museum because we were in there for just enough time to run through and use the bathroom (remember, I’m not a huge museum girl).

J had read about a super cool suspension bridge that he wanted to see. Someone also told him there was a viewing area through a little cave on the side of a cliff that lead to a clear view of the bridge. So, we hopped in a quick Uber, walked the bridge, went through the cave, and saw the bridge from all the angles.

The weather wasn’t great and we didn’t have another night at the hostel booked, so we went to get our bags from the bar, I mean hostel, and we were back to the train station. I wanted to visit Wales so we decided to spend a few days in Cardiff. I am fairly confident we rode the train more in this week than I have my entire life.

We luckily found a hotel with a great location in the city and about 500 steps from the train station. We got in pretty late, so we dropped our bags off and found some food. To no ones surprise, I was craving sushi and J did not object. We hadn’t eaten much so a roll or two wasn’t going to cut it. It was time for some all you can eat sushi. We found a spot close enough and we were on our way to paradise. The fish was decent but the portions were perfect.

Day 3: We woke up and began exploring. We went to a food hall called Cardiff Market and had some breakfast. Then we walked the rows of the food hall and found these dessert looking things from Cardiff Bakestones that neither one of us could resist. “Can we please have 50?”

For reference, these things were a mix of biscuits, cookies, and a little pancake like. Very delicious. After unnecessarily stuffing our faces, we decided it would be healthy to get a few steps in to try to counteract the amount of food we had just put into our bodies.

It was the honest advertising for me.

We spent the afternoon walking around, visiting the outside of a castle (J found a cool place to take a picture near there), and, eventually, took a short break at the hotel.

Once rested and finally ready to eat again, we researched places to eat. A Portuguese restaurant called Ty Madeira popped up, had amazing reviews, anddd was in walking distance. Done. We walked over and had some food. Their special appetizer for the night was scallops so we got an order and 🤤 they were delicious.

Day 4: While we were searching for our restaurant for dinner, we had also come across a Thai restaurant called TukTuk that looked amazing. It had great reviews and I was very interested in trying the food. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that close so we had decided on the Portuguese restaurant. We were happy with our decision, but I could not stop thinking about that Thai place. So, when we woke up, we waited for the Thai place to open and we were on our way. Why pick one restaurant when you can try both!

It was one of the best Thai meals I have had. 10/10. I want to go back now! It was pretty heavy so we walked back to the our hotel and decided to stop at the Cardiff Museum along the way. Honestly, I needed any extra steps I could get at this point. We walked through (probably closer to ran through with my attention span) and finally made our way back to the hotel. We got our things and headed back to the train station, yes again.