It’s now Monday morning as I start this post (though I will most assuredly not finish it until later, since we have to head to the train station soon), which means our weekend in Wales has come to an end. But how can that be, since I haven’t even shared the details with you yet?? Is this a world gone topsy-turvy?! Never fear, dear readers, as you’re about to get those details. Castles, Doctor Who, and friends, oh my!

As you’ll no doubt remember from my last post, we arrived on Thursday, so I was hoping to wake in our London hotel on Friday morning feeling refreshed. I didn’t have the best first-night-in-a-new-country night of sleep, but it was pretty decent. I still felt compelled to not sleep too late though as I wanted to get a walk around the area in before having to sit on a train for a few hours. Knowing it rained the night before though, I wasn’t sure what to expect on Friday (we’re in the UK, after all), but the weather cooperated with no rain, a nice temp, and even a bit of sun. Result! Although Scott and I did some walking around Chelsea & Kensington on our first big trip together a decade ago, I’ve never spent much time wandering there since then, so I enjoyed seeing some new-to-me sights. As you can see below, there was nothing earth-shattering, but some nice churches, interesting houses, and pretty green spaces, all of which piqued my interest.

Remember how I said the photo of the station above would become significant to our morning? Well, the reason for that is not because of what I saw when I took the photo, but rather what I saw when I passed by it again at the end of my walk. Namely, that it was closed and locked up, with security guards turning people away! I had no idea what was going on, but knowing we had only an hour or so before we’d have to use that station to get to Paddington for our train to Swansea, I told everyone about it when I got back. It turned out there was some kind of incident on the District line, which caused severe delays, so I assume that’s why Earl’s Court was shut down. The fact that we knew this fact early was hugely helpful as it gave us time to make alternate plans, which involved taking two Ubers (since we were a group of six) instead of getting to another station (didn’t seem worth the risk, given the line delays). Thankfully, Paddington isn’t far from the Premier Inn, so the ride wasn’t very long or expensive, and we were shortly at the station, staring at the board while waiting for a platform to be assigned. Train travel is one of the things I appreciate the most about being in the UK (and much of Europe) because it’s so easy to do! No need to be there hours early, no worrying about overhead space (trains have plenty of it, so it’s really only a problem if the train is totally full and/or you have big luggage), and the seats are generally pretty comfortable, in my experience.

Once we boarded, we quickly realized the seat reservations for everyone were a bit borked because the seats we actually booked weren’t showing as booked by us, while the ones immediately across the aisle that we DIDN’T book appeared to be ours. The folks around us seemed to have the same issue and everyone was happy to rearrange seats so we could all sit together and there were still plenty of open seats, so everyone was happy. 🙂

Enjoying a lovely train ride to Welsh Wales!

We had a nice train journey, chatting and drinking canned cocktails from a mini-market in the station (that were actually pretty tasty and somewhat strong!) and before we knew it, we arrived in Swansea. It’s not a big town and the station is only about a mile from our hotel, but we all had luggage, plus it was raining a bit, so we found our way to the taxi rank and took two to reach our home for the weekend. Would you believe it’s another Premier Inn? The Premier Inn Swansea Waterfront is where I’ve stayed just about every time I’ve come to Swansea, as it’s SO close to the Village (where Regenerations happens) and it’s far cheaper. And since I’ve always found them to be good hotels, I’m happy to give them more business. I’m sorry to report their wifi wasn’t much better than in London, and that was even after I sprung for the “ultimate” wifi. Ugh! But it was marginally better at least. And the room was fine!

Unusually for me, I forgot to take room photos before both me and my friend met dumped our stuff in it. Ah well – you can still see what it looks like!

It was in Swansea where our friend group got bigger, with friends from in and around Swansea, Brighton, other parts of the US, and even Canada joined us (or attended the convention), so much fun was had on Friday as we spent literally the entire evening in the hotel bar chatting, eating, drinking, and catching up. We stayed until they closed! That’s not necessarily an unusual thing during a convention weekend, but the 11p closing time was a little earlier than the hotel bars in the US! But honestly, that was totally fine with me, especially as I knew I would want to wake up semi-early so I could get out and take a walk before starting the day.

My Saturday morning started with, would you guess, a walk! The weather was mostly cooperative and the forecast told me that likely wouldn’t continue for the whole weekend, so I was happy to get out and explore Swansea as I’ve enjoyed walking around it on previous trips. What I tend to enjoy most is walking by the water, but I somehow got my directions mixed up and ending up walking the opposite direction from the ocean! Never fear though – my Sunday walk got me going the right way, so you’ll see some more ocean-y photos in my next post. 😀 For now though, enjoy what I did get to see in the semi-nice weather.

Don’t you just love a good walk?? By the time I finished, my friends had all finished breakfast and were ready to head over to the other hotel to actually attend the Doctor Who convention we came here for! Not me though – I had designs on visiting another Swansea site I hadn’t seen for many years.

Oystermouth Castle is another ruined castle, but it’s substantially more…substantial than Swansea Castle. This one has a small entrance fee (£6, which I think is the same thing I paid on my last visit in 2006) and there’s a good amount of stuff to see and walk through, so it’s definitely worth visiting! The original building dates back to the early 1100s and was in use for a few hundred years before falling into disrepair by the Middle Ages, eventually getting some restoration work in 2010. I didn’t actually realize this until writing this post just now, but that means that the £1m in restoration done at that time was NOT done when I visited in 2006, so that was a nice bonus! Both Felicity and Matt joined me on this slightly-unplanned side excursion (Matt came from Brighton in his car, so it was especially helpful to have him with us) and I’m so glad we did it! Although the weather turned greyer while we were at the castle, it never rained and I knew the weather would be worse the next day (well, I knew the forecast told me that was likely, at least), so I was even more happy the visit worked out.

Views from two very different-sized windows.

The entrance and interior of the castle’s first indoor latrine.

This is a good example of what I mentioned above about seeing something from above and then getting a closer look at it.

A couple more selfies as we finished up our time at Oystermouth. What a fun little excursion!

With the castle explored and our one hour of free parking expiring, it was time to move on. You know what’s really fun to do after exploration castle ruins? Eating a good meal, of course! At first, we were going to try and park elsewhere so we could walk around The Mumbles a bit, but the next parking lot we visited didn’t have any open spots, so we decided to skip straight to food. 🙂 Matt happened to spot an interesting-looking place on our way to the castle, so we headed back there to see if they were open and if they might have a table for us (having already been turned away from a London restaurant on Thursday, we weren’t sure if Saturday lunch would prove easier) and thankfully they did. Our friend Christopher joined us a little while after we arrived for what turned out to be a REALLY tasty meal. He and Felicity both had a Welsh chicken dish, while Matt had chili (with rice, as chili is always served here), and I had a super delicious Cajun chicken and chorizo burger. Thank you to the West Cross Inn for such good eating!

Both my burger and my brownie were so good!

By this time, it was late afternoon, so we made our way back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our crew for another chill evening. As I said above, the rest of our group had gone to the Village for convention-related fun, but they’d returned back to our hotel by this point in the day, so we shockingly decided to hang out in the bar/restaurant again, where we ended up having dinner. I was so full from lunch that I opted to just have a bit more dessert in the form of ice cream (hey, there’s always room for ice cream), but everyone’s meals looked really good (and from what I heard from my friends, they tasted good, too). I know hotel food can be hit or miss, especially at a “chain” hotel like Premier Inn, but I have to say that the dinners we had were really nice – good portions without being huge, tasty food, good service, and decent prices, too.

As a group, most of us did decide we should all go back to the Village again to do at least a little convention stuff, plus I wanted to see the friends who were there that I hadn’t seen yet. I’ve got another post coming about the convention stuff though, so watch for that soon!