Minnesota...Amsterdam...Cardiff

Lesson learned over the past two days: Attitude is everything.

I thought flying to Cardiff would be easy. Long, but easy. And it was! Only it turned up being much longer than I expected. Due to malfunctions on my first plane flying out from Salt Lake City, I missed my connection to Amsterdam from Minneapolis by five minutes. That meant 6 hours waiting in Minneapolis, and 9 hours waiting in Amsterdam. Sick. But all that kept running through my mind was how Braeden Udy used to get really excited about problems and just think of them as bigger adventures. Now my flight is a story worth telling! AND, on top of all that, there were actually some silver linings to the rain cloud that blew over my trip.

       1. I got to reprint my boarding passes at the airport (because my flights were changed) so now I have    legitimate boarding passes compared to the first ones I printed out home. These will be pasted into my journal. If I was cool and tech savvy I would scan in a picture of one for you. I love all three of them so much.

       2. I became very familiar with the Amsterdam airport. Next time I am there I will definitely make time to see the museum and maybe take an excursion through the city.

        3. I came into the UK at sunset. Beautiful. The first things I noticed where the smell of the sea, the breeze coming off it and the lovely contrast of pink sky with the green, rolling hills.

        4. I was going to Europe for Pete's sake. No complaining about delays.

        5. I can't remember anymore. But there were more.

Cardiff is a fun, bustling city but so Dirty. Capitalization was intentional. There is a serious problem with the rubbish retrieval system because every street is covered in trash. The bins aren't big enough and then seagulls and cats come and feast on the refuse. Gross.

We are staying in old row houses that were built originally for miners. (More to come on mining in Wales in later posts). These houses are old and dingy but let's face it, so was my old apartment. Honestly, I have more space here than I did in Centennial II. And I have a single room with a double bed. Here is a picture of the room I am staying in. I had to buy sheets so I picked bright colors from a limited selection. I like the irony of sleeping on sunshine.

Yes that is a map of Great Britain above my bed. I'm going to mark off all the places I visit like in those cliche movies. It's going to be great. Sorry I don't have more pictures. I'm too tired to go out and take some right now. Next post.

Sincerely,

Mariah