12 September 2012 - London, Cardiff & Merthyr Tydfil

I left for Starbucks in the morning before 8am to meet Maxeen. I don’t know how long we both had stood there before I recognized her maybe 15 meters to my left. I had been there for about 7 minutes. Chai tea latte and the croissant were excellent. But they were nothing compared to the joy I felt when seeing “Maxi” after almost two years. And if I value something above food, that’s really saying something.

They have a habit at Starbucks to write down the customer’s name on the mug. Sounds like a nice service, right? The problem is  that they get the names wrong most of the time. This time Maxeen ended up “Maxi” and Maria turned into “B”. It also could’ve been “13” which would’ve been fine. But why “B”?

After the breakfast I walked back to the Ebury House Hotel. I picked my bags and we left for the Victoria Coach Station which was literally just around the corner. The bus was 10 minutes late but it took us to Cardiff through some mist, rain but mostly sunshine. Susanna said she saw a wooden house by the M4 highway. It would’ve been the first sighting of a wooden house. I’m not sure if I believe her though… ;)

In Cardiff we had to walk quite a bit to the train station. I was starting to feel blisters in my hands. If my bag didn’t have wheels I probably would’ve tossed it in London already. The guy who sold me our train tickets looked at me funny and laughed when I said that the plan is to stay in Merthyr Tydfil until December. (I can't pronounce the town for sh*t.) It was quite worrying to be honest. Were we going to a Welsh township?

Merthyr is about an hour ride on train from Cardiff so quite far but it is a city, thank goodness! We walked from the train station to the bus station. There we were feeling extremely confused as the non-existing signs were quite uninformative. But we found ourselves on the right bus and heading towards Prince Charles Hospital.

At the hospital we found out that, against the email confirmation we had received, there were no rooms booked for us. Luckily the porters were very nice and we ended up getting three keys. I’m one floor above Hanna and Susanna who both have rooms in the same flat. We try to sort out tomorrow if there’s any way ­we could move to a same flat. It would make cooking and grocery shopping somewhat easier.

The food at the hospital’s canteen was just half-decent ((Where are all the veggies?!)) so we took the bus back down to town later in the evening. We spent about an hour and a half at Tesco and bought all kinds of handy things – a peeler for example. We need to head back tomorrow for duvets, a pillow, hand disinfectant, kitchen towels etc. The rooms are so flipping cold! And there are only pretty much two sheets which should function as a blanket. And I can’t find my gloves anywhere…