Tuesday, 5/18
More exploring of Cardiff today. Cardiff Castle (next to the hotel) has been occupied in some way since Roman times.
Cardiff Castle Keep
We got tickets to a session of the Welsh Assembly today. Wales (along with Scotland and Northern Ireland) recently was given more authority over local decisions by the UK government in London. They take this pretty seriously and there seems to be a lot of local pride in their local government. It got a little boring after a while—especially if they spoke Welsh—but I noticed that the ministers avoided answering any questions posed to them directly, just like politicians at home! They’re well on their way.
The last things we visited were some architecturally interesting civic buildings and the Cardiff University. Oh, to be young again.
Wednesday, 5/18
We left Cardiff today to drive in rural Wales. The first stop was Caerphilly, a nice little town with the biggest castle in Wales.
Caerphilly Castle
Since part of my dad’s interest in coming here was genealogy, we spent some time in the library at Merthyr Tydfil and got the baptism and marriage records of my great-great- grandfather. Earlier, we even visited the church where they were married. We went in and after the priest was told there were “two Yanks” here to see some marriage records, he took time to show us around and told us about the church’s history. He even invited us to stay for the Welsh funeral that was going to take place, but we didn’t take him up on that.
We stopped at the ruins of Tretower Castle in the afternoon and took some pictures. This is the castle that we think our ancestors owned in the 1600s. I read on the Internet that most Vaughns are from here, so it must be true!
Tretower Castle--my ancestral holdings
BTW, Cymru is Welsh for Wales.
It's 9:39 PM (GMT) in Brecon, Wales, UK
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