London day three: The Doctor Who Experience

So today is the day, or rather the destination, that gave rise to this whole trip to London, visiting the Doctor Who experience.

Today is also my birthday, as going to the Doctor Who Experience is my birthday present for myself. To be honest I have been a bit nervous about how I would handle celebrating my birthday all alone in a strange place where noone will congratulate me, but it turns out that it went just fine.

The Doctor Who Experience is not exactly located in the heart of London, actually it’s in Cardiff in Wales, so it’s a 3 hours train ride both ways, so you probably need to be a bit of a fan go to there.

When arriving at Cardiff Bay I got to experience the famous english weather, it was raining cats and dogs, and blowing up a storm. On the train to Cardiff I had noticed a girl with a Doctor Who bag, so I asked her if she was also going to The Doctor Who Experience, which she was, she had come from France to see it so she was just as lost as me in Cardiff, but we managed to arrive safely but drenched, at the correct location.

The Doctor Who experience itself is in interactive tour that lasts about half an hour, it is probably aimed at a younger audience, but I still managed to enjoy myself, you get to operate a TARDIS and get attacked by daleks. Photograpy ios not allowed during the experience, so there are no photos from that, but afterwards there is an exhibit about Doctor Who, and oh my did I take a lot of photos (550 to be exact, which you can see quite a few of in the gallery at the bottom of the article). It has props, costumes, behind the scenes video and photos and stories from the shows 50 years of history.

After the exhibit you do the obligatory exit through the gift shop.
One thing that has always baffled me about Doctor Who is the lack of merchandise concidering how huge the franchise is all over the world. The gift shop really didn’t do much to change that perception, while there was a lot of stuff it wasn’t all that impressive, mostly cheap plastic thingies, so I contained myself and only bought a tiny Amy Pond figure and another sonic screwdriver for my collection. There was a Clara Oswald painting I would have quite liked but it’s just too large for my luggage to bring home.

When I left the experience the weather had cleared up a bit, it was still very windy but the rain had stopped, so I got to walk around Cardiff a bit and photograph locations from the show before I got on a train back to London.

It has been a lovely birthday, I have of course missed my family and friends, but luckly I have heard from lots of them on social media, so thank you for all the birthday greetings.

I have not walked quite as much today, so the pedometer is only at 14127.

And now it’s time for way too many pictures.