Cardiff Bay and Torchwood tour

Hello all. As most of you know or have read I live in Cardiff in Wales. But as most of my readers are not from the UK let alone Wales you don't know what it looks like around here. So I thought I would give you a little mini tour of some of Cardiff Bay. I decided to do this for 2 reasons. One being I thought it would be nice for some of you to get to see a bit of Wales you may never get to see. And two being that I went to my office monday morning for a meeting, only to find it empty (most annoying) so decided to go for a walk with my trusty digi-cam and take some pictures to share with you. So at least I wouldn't have a wasted trip.

Warning: Lots of photos to follow! But at least they are kinda interesting!

First is a panoramic of half of the bay front looking out to sea. The white building to the left is an ice-cream parlor and the one on the right is a Turkish restaurant that is very nice.

I have tried to put these in order so if you walked it they would follow properly (kinda). It was really quite monday morning down there as kids have gone back to school and the sky was a bit grey, threatening to rain, which it eventually did! This is the far side of the bay front. The white building you can just see amongst the trees is the Norwegian Church (built in 1868) which is now used as an arts center. The boat in the foreground of the photo is one of 3 Wave Rider's which offer speedy trips out into the bay for tourists.

If you looked out across the water now you would also see St David's Hotel, which is a really posh well known hotel in Wales. Lots of Celebrities stay here when they visit.

Next we have the Pierhead Building. Which is one of Cardiff's more recognizable landmarks (its in the background of most welsh news programs) It now houses part of the National Assembly for Wales.

From here I wandered across the little bridge where you get your first sight of the Welsh Millennium Center. Plus all the funny pillars are part of Roald Dahl Plaza. It is a large open amphitheatre style plaza frequently used as a venue for carnivals and festivals all year round.

So if you take a right around the big red building you find the Nation Assembly for Wales building, or to give it its official title The Senedd. This is our government building with a rather fancy roof!

I decided to take the steps down to the front of the Plaza and go see this.... Now some of you may be thinking how sad it is to see a memorial for someone... and some of you might be laughing (or upset I suppose) if you actually know who this is for. Well let me explain. Hands up if you have seen or heard of a TV show called Torchwood. It is one of the spin off series of Doctor Who. It is mainly based and filmed in and around Cardiff, especially Cardiff Bay. The center for the Torchwood team is called the Hub and is suppose to be hidden under Roald Dahl Plaza. Now during the last episode of Torchwood the Hub blew up with poor Ianto Jones (one of the team) still inside. So I assume you can see where this is going. This memorial wall is to the character Ianto Jones! This is where part of his body was found in the TV show. He was a big part of the series and loved by many. This is a tiny part of the original memorial. There have been hundreds of flowers left over time and letters from people who have come from all over the world (and lots of coffee sachets!) Madness! The people who own this part of the bay had to put up a sign to tell people this was not a real person who had dies in the bay.

I saw this homeless man sitting opposite the wall writing on a crumpled piece of paper for ages so thought I would take a snap of him too. He seemed so engrossed in his writing even though it was starting to rain.

Now if any of you wish to visit the hidden Hub base you just have to stand on the middle paving slab in front of the huge water sculpture and wait for the lift to take you down into the hub.

Of corse I am joking. This is where the pretend Hub entrance is, but obviously it is not really there. Although people have actually asked the Tourist Information Center how to work the lift to get to the Hub, lol!

This is me reflected in the water!

This is the front of the Welsh Millennium Center with a huge curved wall covered in Welsh writing. Which is all cut out, so if you are inside it is like huge weirdly shaped windows! The Millennium Center hosts many musical events, theater productions and Exhibitions. As well as recently hosting the National Clothes Swap Roadshow

Much of Cardiff was covered with these huge poppy displays for remembrance day but as of last night they have been changed into huge christmas trees, with massive lit baubles hanging off the branches instead of the poppies.

But here is Cardiff's first official christmas tree. They were putting it up when I was there but it has not had the lights added yet.

Well that is my mini tour of Cardiff Bay done, even though there are so many other things I could show you I think you may have seen enough photos for now. What do you think? I shall do another mini tour of somewhere else in Cardiff next time if you like. Maybe you could do a mini picture tour of where you live so we can all see each others towns? Hope I didn't bore you?

Daisymay XOXO