can't wait.

pay cheque pay cheque, please fly to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. i need to b less broke.

york.

i hav been to york before, and i love it, it is like a town of fairy tales. every street looks like wad u see in the english story books telling about the witch and the princess and the prince.

first stop- the train musuem as our little paran absolutely loves trains. u could find almost all the english trains.

u wont believe this japanese train was from the 60s. it looked too wonderful to be 50years old.



a bridge across the city. how unique is tat. the bridge is part of the castle structure and it saves some traffice light waiting on the main roads.

YUMI (york unifying and multicultural initiatives) was on tat day. there were lots of food stalls from different countries. lot of free food to try.

york is beautiful. even a purposeless leisure walk around the city was a pleasure. we love york!

newcastle.

from angel of the north, we headed off to newcastle, the city with a lot of beautiful bridges.


there was a Summertyne American Festival at the Sage. it was a rare sunny day, sitting under the sun listening to the band was a joy. the gal had asuch a gorgeous voice.

found som HUGE strawberries. soooooooooooooo happpppppppppppppppy.

there must be a game thingy goin on. we saw a lot of guys walking on the street wearing the same wigs and t-shirts writing "who's the caddy". i tot it was quite funny and decided to stop some of them for a photo, and guess wad, one of them had a t-shirt "i am the caddy". how luckyyyyy. i found the caddddddddddyyy! ok they were a bit over excited and insisted to put me on the shoulder for the photo and i couldnt say no.

angel of the north.

on our way to newcastle, we visited angel of the north. a huge thanks to paran who made the effort for us to see such a beautiful sculpture.

from far away, Angel of the north's outstretched arms reminded me of Christ Redeemer Statue in Brazil that overlooks Rio de Janeiro from atop 2,343-foot Mount Corcovado. (this is another thing ai ling realli wanna see one day! who's in?)

yarm.

if its not bcos of little paran, i wouldnt know about this small village let alone visit it. but here we are, paran's tiny hometown! small but peaceful ^^ like wisteria lane in Desperate Housewive.

cardiff.

the night we arrived in cardiff, it was near midnight, so we decided to take a cab. the taxi driver told us the hotel was miles away from the city and advised us to book a nearer hotel; it may be more expensive but it saves the transport costs. i have to say, he was absolutely right.



though situated in an odd area which was pretty soulless, the hotel was pleasant. a big room with a nice bathroom. poor tourists like me havnt been indulging in such luxury for a long time.

the next day, it was a good day with plenty of sunshine. we took a bus to the town centre, leaving the luggage with the hotel reception.

first destination, the cardiff castle. WELCOME!!!! it was a gorgeous castle i have to say, im not sure if its the sunshine, but it just looked magnificient. we paid 10pounds each to get it. expensive but to me its worth the visit. the first time i came to cardiff 3 years ago, i just looked at it from outside, i decided this time we just treat ourselves better.

a lady was training a fatso owl in the castle garden. the owl was pretty lazy, it took the poor lady so long before the fat bird flew to her to grab the food in her hand. it enjoyed quite a lot of attentions form the visitors though.

on our way for a quick bite, we stopped at a second-hand bookshop to tru to hunt for some cheap travel guidebooks (ai ling wanna hav an adventure in the middle east!). outside the shop, we saw a HUGE DOG. im not even joking, tat was one of the very few big dogs i hav seen in my life. however, it looked adorable, even a dog-lover-not like me found it quite harmless and cute.

if you come to the cardiff market, try out the welsh cakes! we were not big fans. it tasted like plenty of flour with sugar toppings. but, do wad the welsh do when u come to wales lol.

millenium stadium has always looked pretty damn cool to me. i have no idea wad the big welsh words mean but they just looked overwhelmingly wonderful.

the mermaid quay. walking along the quay and feeling the sea breeze under the sun was a blessing.

after a big meal in wagamama, we caught the bus back to the hotel. the hotel would have been so perfect to me if it wasnt tat understaffed. we were waiting for ages before we could get our luggage from the staff. and guess wad, when we walked out to catch the bus, we freaking missed it and the next coming bus was an hour later. FRUSTRATED!!! we walked back to the hotel to ask the staff to call us a cab. feeling unsatisfied and ripped off, we tried our very best to reduce wadever fares the cab would cost. thus we asked the driver to stop us at the castle in he town, and we walked quite a long way to the train station--it saved us a few pounds, but compared to if we just tooked the bus, we wasted a few pounds.

HOWEVER, we said no complains bcos God loves us too much, the moment we were leaving cardiff it starting raining. we had a good day all in all ^^

llandudno (2)

after a night of good sleep, we met up noreen to head off to conwy castle.

we tried to kill some time at the second-hand shop near the bus stop as we were waiting for the bus to the conwy castle. got a travel book on Cyprus for only 29p!!!!! its great to recycle books, it especially benefits poor tourists like us. BUT i may just fly to Cyprus one day just bcos i read this book--not sure if i end up saving any money anyway.

conwy castle is not huge but to me it well preserved and beautiful. the whole town is full of ancient english scent. i came closer to think i actualli prefer to tour around small towns and villages in every country, it is how u can experience the lifestyle and culture of the people there.




































the british smallest house!!!!!!!!!!!!! for such a small house it managed to make quite a BIG money. it costs 1 pound for an adult to enter, for like less than a minute. it was realli quite small in there, but there wasnt a toilet nor a kitchen.















wonder why i had a sweet tooth during the whole trip, kept on hunting for desserts in every cake shop. brownies are always the best!












lunchtime we had fish and chips again. noreen was convinving us that this place had realli gret fish and chips so we thought ok, we would hav faith one more time. it turned out to be quite nice actualli.

as we were back to llandudno from conwy, we prepared to leave for the next destination-- cardiff. we got some chinese takeaway and walked to the train station. however we decided that the train station was a bit deserted and soulless, so we walked to a further park to kill some time. AND THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE TRIP. the journey to cardiff was llandudno- llandudno junction-cardiff. we were supposed to leave from llandudno at 6.04pm to llandudno junction, llandudno junction at 6.30pm to cardiff. when i bought the tickets in manchester, the staff somhow clipped the ticket at 6.30pm on the top. if it wasnt lim ai bee tat looked at the journey itinery at 6.01pm and we ran like idiots to the station, we would hav missed the train and the next train to cardiff. it was crazy and we could hav just missed the train but i think God loves us too much to leave us stranded. what a blessing!

safely reached the cardiff hotel, exhausted but grateful.