June, 2007

I was in England for a while, and had a free weekend to do some exploring. I've spent so much time in England and particularly Oxford over the past few years that I decided it was time for something new. Being a newfound fan of the BBC television show "Doctor Who", I thought it might be a good idea to travel out to Cardiff to not only view some of the filming locations for the show, but also to visit the Doctor Who Exhibit.

	This is sort of the main stop in Cardiff Bay. They do a ton of filming for both Doctor Who and Torchwood (The spinoff show) here. in fact, that big mirror finish fountain you see on the left is the main entrance to the torchwood facility, and also the center of some rift in the space time continuum. At least, that's what the show says.		There was some sort of military exposition on that day, which gave me the chance to actually board and investigate a British naval vessle. Pretty cool, to say the least. The funny part was that they had a few guns there, chained to the deck, that people could pick up and handle. Because guns aren't exactly legal in the UK like they are in the US, people were very excited at the rare opportunity to actually handle a hand gun. Those crazy Brits!
	Here's Cardiff's central city. A little more "old world" feel than the bay area, but still pretty neat looking. Regular readers of my travel page will know that I'm a sucker for downtown areas and old buildings. This place had both.		I spent a ton of time roaming through the exhibit itself. It was really quite spectacular. Smaller than I had hoped, but they had pretty much all of the significant pieces I had hoped to see... save for the Sonic Screwdriver. There were costumes from all major characters from the new series, a couple Daleks, and even K-9. It was well worth the trip.