Search This Blog

Saturday, 4 November 2023

Newport and Caerphilly

Last Saturday, I had a nice little trip out of the country and visited Wales! This was a trip taken partly for practical reasons and partly for touristic reasons; my morning was spent in Newport, seeing what the city would be like as a potential place to move to, and my afternoon was spent visiting Caerphilly Castle!

My job is based in Bristol, and I go into the office twice a week, so I need to live somewhere within reasonable commuting distance, but not necessarily in Bristol itself. At the moment, I'm living in a flat share in Bristol, and to be honest, I've found I've gone off this city to some extent since moving here, even though I always enjoyed visiting before. There are lots of issues with things like drugs and homelessness, and it also has one of the highest costs of living in the entire country. When Claudio comes over here, I'd like us to live in our own place together (which would be super expensive in Bristol), and I'd also like to us live somewhere that feels less seedy and depressing. Newport doesn't have the greatest reputation, but it's cheaper than Bristol, so I decided to go and see what it was like.

Overall, it was better than I expected. There's a nice old-fashioned arcade with shops and cafés, as well as a big market/food court, which reminded me of one I used to go to in Valletta.







The city centre also has a shopping area with a cinema and all the shops and restaurants you'd expect to find in a British city. Generally, I felt like the city centre was safer and cleaner than Bristol's.






The part of the city I liked the most was the riverside, which is where you can find Newport Castle! A castle is definitely a plus point for any city, as far as I'm concerned, and I found the riverside quite picturesque in general.











During my morning in Newport, I walked up a massive hill to get to St Woolos Cathedral. It's more of a church than a cathedral really, but it was interesting to see it, and to get more of a feel for the city.






I wanted to make a bit of a day out of my trip to Wales, so in the early afternoon, I took a very crowded train to Cardiff, followed by a very clean, comfortable and quiet train to Caerphilly (which reminded me of trains I've been on in continental Europe).

I was very excited to go to Caerphilly, as its castle is the largest in Wales, and that's saying something, considering how many castles there are in Wales!

The town of Caerphilly itself seems quite unremarkable when you come out of the train station, but once you get to the castle, you can't help but be impressed. It's so huge, and the fact that it's surrounded by a moat makes it even more spectacular.
















At the moment, the castle's great hall is being reconstructed to make it look as it did at its peak in the 1320s! They're also making the site more accessible and building a café and toilets there, so in around a year's time, it's going to be an even better place for a day out than it is already. As it is now, you can go up inside some of the towers, and onto the rooftop of the main part of the castle, which is still a pretty decent amount to see, and took me a good hour or two to go round.

It was really fun to step into history and explore the interior of the castle - it was built in the 1200s and a lot of it seems to have not changed since then, particularly the steps to go up and down the towers! The place had a lot of atmosphere, and the typical Welsh weather and Halloween decorations further added to that.

















Of course, one of my favourite parts of my trip to the castle was seeing some dragons - always a must when visiting Wales! You can even press a button to listen to a story about the dragon family either in Welsh or English. 





To conclude, my day trip to Wales was a nice little escape to a different country, and felt like a bit of a holiday, even if part of the trip was for practical reasons.

Actually, since I took this trip a week ago, there have been some potential new developments that have come up in terms of what Claudio and I will do and where we'll live in the near future, so I'm holding off scouting out new places to live close to Bristol until we're more certain about that. I definitely don't see myself living in this part of the world long term, but I could be here for several more months, so I'm keeping Newport as an option for now.

Well, that's all for today, but I'll be writing again sometime soon, probably with some travel adventures from around the Bristol area. And next month, Claudio and I should be spending some time abroad, which will be exciting! See you back here soon!

Saturday, 21 October 2023

Charlotte's Travel Adventures is 5 Years Old!

This blog, Charlotte's Travel Adventures, is turning 5 years old, so I felt it was only right to write a post to celebrate this special anniversary!

I published my first post on the 25th October 2018, which doesn't really feel that long ago, even though a lot has happened since then. At the time, I was back at university in Nottingham, having just completed a life-changing Year Abroad, and I wanted to try to keep this whole spirit of travel and adventures going, even though my everyday life had gone back to being something more mundane, which is why I decided to start this blog.

I didn't post again until January 2019, when I wrote about my trip to Chile to visit my boyfriend Claudio, who I'd been with for about half a year at that point. And after that, I didn't write much else until I finished final exams at university in June 2019. But since then, with the exception of the first couple of months of Covid lockdowns, I've written here pretty regularly, no matter what my situation is, or whether or not I've had many opportunities to travel.

The last five years have not always been easy for me. When you leave university, it's quite a weird time, where you don't have the structure of school and university anymore, and you're thrown out into the world to figure out for yourself what you're going to do next; it's hard to know if you're making the right decisions until you can look back with the gift of hindsight. Not long after graduation, I decided that being a teacher of English as a foreign language out in Chile was what I wanted to do for the next year or two, if not longer. So I got myself TEFL qualified, started teaching online, and eventually managed to find a job at a language school in Santiago, which I planned to start at some point in 2020.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and life was pretty much put on hold for two years. With the exception of the last few months of 2020, when Claudio came to visit me and my family, the pandemic was a time of just having to be patient and get through each day and week at a time, while waiting to be able to get my life started again.

And then in February 2022, I was able to finally move to Chile, and since then I've been making up for lost time! I had some fantastic experiences during my 15 months in South America, and then moved to Malta for a few months to complete an internship in digital marketing, and now I've got a permanent role in the marketing sector and am currently based in the city of Bristol.

Even more excitingly, Claudio and I had a civil union in May and plan to have a proper engagement and wedding in the near future! He'll be coming to join me here in the UK later this year, and I can't wait! 

So although there were a lot of of challenges over the last five years and there will surely be more to come, I'm really happy and grateful for how things have turned out.

And there has been a lot to document on this blog! I've spent 18 months of the last two years living abroad and have been on various exciting travels over the last five years. Since starting this blog, I've travelled in 12 different countries (13 if you count England and Wales as separate countries!), 6 of which I'd never visited before.

Here are a selection of highlights...

Visiting the Atacama Desert in January 2019












































Visiting Madrid in November 2019



















Visiting Lisbon in November 2019



















Visiting Buenos Aires in February 2020



















Visiting Uruguay in February 2020



















Exploring London with Claudio in October 2020



















Visiting Stockholm in October 2020



















Exploring Cardiff with Claudio in December 2020

























Moving to Chile in February 2022



















Visiting Machu Picchu in October 2022

























Visiting Rio de Janeiro in December 2022

























Visiting the Chilean Lake District and Chiloé in April 2023



















Our civil union in May 2023

























Living in Malta between May and August 2023



















Visiting Sicily in June 2023




















I hope that in another 5 years' time, I'll still be writing on this blog and will have plenty more exciting travel adventures between now and then!