Out of the Blue(s)

I soon realised that I had made a mistake and that the whole business of not being punched in the face was going to be challenging, to say the least. It was cold and windy – but then again, what do you expect Cardiff to be on the 31st of December? Sure, everyone around looked cheerful enough, and the group of retired women whose cheeks were suspiciously rosy had offered me a sip of whatever their hip flasks contained, but I didn’t feel at ease

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Top 10 Things to Do in Cardiff

Cardiff will always hold a special place in my heart. As I was telling you in a previous post, I fell in love with it as soon as I got off the London train on a cold and dark December. In my mind, the name will always conjure up a memory of a frozen nose and red cheeks on evenings at the Bay. I was so cold that I could no longer feel my fingers and Mermaid Quay sparkled with fairy lights. We stopped at the (now defunct) Café Rouge. I remember the warmth of the onion soup bowl around which I wrapped my hands and afterwards, the icy wind as we walked back to our hotel. I loved that winter, as I have loved every winter there ever since (though it is of course very nice in the summer too).

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Daresbury, Cheshire: Lewis Carroll’s birthplace

As any biography of Lewis Carroll will inform you, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the eldest boy and third child of Frances Jane Lutwidge and Charles Dodgson, in the small parsonage of Daresbury (Cheshire) near the towns of Warrington and Runcorn on the 27th of January, 1832. And of course, if you are a Carrollian, you might want to visit his birthplace someday.

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Bay of the Somme

For a Belgian like me, it is always a bit of a magical moment to re-discover that the rest of the world hasn't felt the need to pack their seaside with ugly fifteen-story buildings like we did. Look at the Bay of the Somme, for example, where the local authorities have done their best to keep the landscape in a state of semi-wilderness, which benefits not only the flora and the fauna but also the mind of whoever visits the region.

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