New Years Eve in Wales

One of the downfalls of booking hotels online is not really knowing where the hotel is located or what it will be like. We found this out while trying to book a hotel in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, and finding out the hotel we booked was in Newport. A city with nothing much to offer and at least thirty minutes away from Cardiff.

Jess and I decided it was much better idea to stay in a hostel in Cardiff on New Years Eve than try and commute from Newport. So after a little negotiation with some hotel managers who never seemed to be at the hotel we freed ourselves up for New Year and checked into a really flash hostel with a window view from the room overlooking the river and the Millennium Stadium.

While in Cardiff Jess and I visited the castle, took a walk around Cardiff Bay and spent New Years Eve at the Walkabout, the Aussie themed pub chain which put on a good New Years Eve party.

After a few days in Cardiff we decided to move on and instead of heading back to Newport we continued west to Swansea to check into yet another dodgy hotel. The hotel was located just across from the beach, all the hotels in the area seemed to have been untouched since the 1970's and considering there was a layer of ice on the sand I was not ready to go swimming. Swansea was also a friendly city with a bit to offer for a weekend visit although one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Swansea was to discover more about the life of Dylan Thomas.