Cardiff via Caerphilly Castle

Thursday, 31 October 2019

Last night in the apartment was not the best.  The party did seem to end at midnight and I was able to fall asleep, but according to Tim, the music started back up at 12:30 AM.  Although I didn't hear that music, I did hear someone banging on the apartment building's outside door at 4:30 AM.  Since no one answered their banging, they decided to call each of the apartments asking people to open the door.  OY! 

Luckily we left this place this morning and going to Cardiff, the capital of Wales.  On the way, we stopped at Caerphilly Castle, built between 1268-1290.

Rick Steves said to skip this castle if we had visited other Welsh castles in the north, but since we bought an annual membership, we decided to check it out.  We are glad we did.  Here are some cool shots Tim took walking around the castle.

Entering the Inner Ward

Private Apartment

One of the towers of the castle is leaning at a 10 degree angle.  They have a cool wooden sculpture of a man holding it up (bottom left of photo).  To put this in perspective, the Leaning Tower of Pisa leans about 4 degrees.

One of the cool parts of Caerphilly Castle is the extensive renovation that was done from 1928 though the 1960s.  So, instead of looking up towers that have windows and fireplaces and no floors, this castle has floors installed, so you can really see what it was like.

Here is a reconstruction of a bedroom:

And the Great Hall:

During the reconstruction they installed this wooden terrace on the top of the wall called a hoarding.  They even have mannequins inside the hoarding:

We spent about 2 hours at Caerphilly Castle.  We can't check into our AirBnB until 3 PM, so we decided to check out a brewery nearby for lunch...oh, and a flight:

Tiny Rebel Brewing, Newport, Wales, 31 October 2019

I really like the graphics for this brewery...between their logo, the painted storage vats outside, and their cans.  They seem to have a great artist on staff.