Cardiff

Last weekend John and I went to Cardiff (the capital of Wales). It was the first UK country I’ve been to, apart from England obviously. We had a really good time. John planned the whole weekend and kept everything on the itinerary a secret.

We drove there after work on Friday. It was only a couple of hours away and we didn’t run into much traffic. John had made reservations at a really nice little restaurant called The Armless Dragon. They had a small, specialist menu that changed daily. I had fish and John had pigeon. We both really liked what we had. I was told mine was boneless, so didn’t really look through it very carefully. After I had taken a couple of bites that clearly had bones in them I discovered that there actually were bones in the middle, it was sort of filleted but they’d left the bones in the middle and you could easily slide the meat off the bones on both sides. It tasted a LOT better once I realized this!

After dinner we went to a bar, but my stomach was really hurting (I’m convinced it was due to all the bones I’d eaten) so since it was taking ages to get served anyway we just went back to the hotel for the evening.

The next morning we had beautiful clear skies and sunshine, although it was very cold. We went on a tour around Cardiff Castle. We had a really good tour guide who was funny and informative. After the castle we went to lunch at a really nice French restaurant. John had wanted to get the reservations for dinner but couldn’t get in, so we had a late lunch there instead. It was really delicious. Because we’d dressed to be out all day instead of dressing to go to a nice restaurant for dinner, we were a bit underdressed. Oh well, they were nice about it and I got a heaping portion of mussels regardless!

After lunch we went to Millennium Stadium, which is where the rugby team plays as well as hosting lots of football, concerts, etc. It’s the only stadium in the UK with a retractable roof. We had another charismatic tour guide for that tour.

Thankfully we’d both stuffed ourselves so much at lunch that we didn’t need any dinner, because John had booked us tickets to see Romeo and Juliet at Cardiff’s theatre. We both enjoyed it although at points were struggling to stay awake – between all the walking all day, having no nap, the darkness and the flowery Shakespearian speech it was nearly enough to send us into nap time!

After the theatre we went to a fun, grungy bar that played really good indie music. We watched the mostly student crowd dance, snog, drink, and sing to all the great indie music of the moment. It became painfully obvious to us that our uni days are quickly becoming the days of yor.

The next day was still cold, but this time overcast and rainy. We went to Cardiff Bay and walked around for as long as we could stand it. The bay is really nicely done up. It reminded us a lot of Liverpool. It was clean, modern, and had loads of restaurants and bars. It had obviously had a huge renovation in the last few years.

On the way home we went to a mine that was about 40 minutes outside of Cardiff. It was wicked! I hadn’t been in anything like it. It was a lot more structured than I imagined. It had lots of support beams and equipment and the tunnels were big and tall. It went on for miles. We don’t really know how big it was but it was at least three miles. Of course, we only were guided through a very small section of the entire mine. And yet again we had a wonderful tour guide. Three for three on Welsh tour guides!

Click the pic above to link to all the pictures from the weekend.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday was a lovely Valentine’s Day. John ordered a bouquet of gorgeous flowers to work. All my colleagues were very impressed!

Jude has taken an interest in my flowers, although his interest is more culinary than anything. John is working from home today and sent these pictures through to show that Jude keeps trying to eat my flowers.

After work we exchange presents. I got John Madagascar and the Richard Ashcroft CD. I got six coasters with pictures of us from various occasions (wedding, holidays, etc), massage oil, and a much needed sudoku book (I had run out of puzzles in my old one!). I was pretty spoiled considering we had agreed not to spend much this year.

Then we went to dinner. I had made the reservations and John didn’t know where we were going. We were eating in Winchester, and I had John drive while I navigated. It was hard to hide where we were going considering he could see we were headed to Winchester. However, he never guessed the actual restaurant even if the town was easy to figure out. We ate at a really nice fish restaurant called Loch Fyne. It was really fantastic food. John had the crab bisque to start and I had smoked salmon and caviar. For mains I had mussels and scallops in a creamy, potato-y sauce and John had char grilled red mullet. It was a set menu so desert was included, even though I could hardly finish my main course and had no room for desert. But I had a few bites of vanilla panacotta with berries and John had banana and toffee crepes.

We waddled out of the restaurant with full, satisfied bellies. We got to the car right before it started pouring. The rest of the night and on into the early morning there was loads of rain and strong wind.

Chicester

Last weekend John and I went to the Weald & Downland open air museum. I think their website sums it up the best: Set in 50 acres of beautiful Sussex countryside is a very special place to wander amongst a fascinating collection of nearly 50 historic buildings dating from the 13th to the 19th century, many with period gardens, together with farm animals, woodland walks and a picturesque lake.

It was a really cool place. They have dismantled these buildings and re-built them on the site. Some of the buildings were furnished and some were bare, but they were all very old.
It was a really pretty, sunny day although very cold. We took a break and got some hot chocolate/tea and cake to try to warm up, but it wasn’t until later in the evening, after a hot bath, that I finally warmed up!

They had big shire working horses there that kept passing by, pulling wagons filled with hay and so forth. We also saw some piglets and their big fat momma pig. A volunteer we were talking to said they kill one of the pigs every year and eat him. :-(

After the museum we went into the Chicester town center to walk around the cathedral. It was really pretty. They had really nice elderly volunteers when we walked in who were handing out brochures and welcoming us. They didn’t mention anything about suggested donations, which surprised and delighted me. I saw a pretty high-tech (for a church) computer screen that said we could make a credit card donation using the machine, so we happily did that. When we walked to the other end of the cathedral we saw a square hole in the ground with glass covering it that exposed a Roman mosaic that was buried underneath the church. There was a small machine on the wall nearby and a sign that said ‘Insert 20p to light up the mosaic’. Clever. Then there was a sign to the church treasury, and at the entrance to that was a turnstile that was operated by inserting 50p. And we passed another big machine that allowed you to make credit card donations. So this church that was built in the 9th century had become very wise to taking advantage of all the ways to extract money from people in the 21st century!

After seeing the cathedral we went for a late lunch at a nice Italian restaurant. We were so tired that we called it a day after that.

On Sunday John’s dad and his girlfriend took us to lunch as they were in Basingstoke. We had a nice meal at our favourite country pub, The Fox.

Vitamins, Munich, etc

Hey hey hey! Unfortunately there isn’t loads going on right now for me to talk about. I’m just sitting here at work listening to The Killers on a Friday afternoon. It’s sunny outside, although very cold.

Speaking of cold, I have a cold right now. Been sneezing and having a runny nose all week. Not fun. At least I don’t have much of a cough… yet. Hopefully it will be one of those sorts of colds where a cough never develops. I’ve got a bit of sinus pain as well. L I stayed home from work on Wednesday to try to get some rest and hope it would all pass. Obviously it hasn’t gone yet, but it was good to get the rest.

I’ve been diligent about taking vitamins since Christmas 2004. I had gotten loads of colds all year in 2004, one after another. And once I started taking vitamins I seemed to never get them. So I’m a bit crushed that multi vitamins haven’t become some sort of magical barrier from me ever getting sick.

We went to the pub today at lunch. Friday tradition. We queued for ages trying to get our drinks and order food. Finally we were able to order, and they got me a diet Coke instead of regular. Life is hard. Not to worry though, eventually I was able to exchange it, after I got the barmaid’s attention again (no small feat).

Last night John and I went to the cinema to see Munich, the Steven Spielberg film. It was pretty good. Long though. But good. The cinema was air conditioned and between that and my cold my throat was so dry by the time we left I didn’t know if I’d be able to talk.

Rich and Anita came back from honeymoon this week. Seemed like they’d been gone forever. They had a good time. I saw their pictures today, looked like they had a great time and weather.

John’s dad is going to be in Basingstoke this weekend. We’re going to see him on Sunday. Tomorrow John’s found something for us to do during the day but I’m not sure yet what it is exactly. Apparently it’s somewhere he’s never been before either.

I’m quite happy because I’m going to be able to go to Emily’s bachelorette party in Chicago at the beginning of May. I have gotten approval to work in Indy the week before, so I’m not going to have to take any vacation time. And obviously and more importantly I get to see my family and friends that week. I haven’t been back since Christmas ’04 (the Christmas of the vitamins, see above). And I’ll get to meet my second nephew, Robby! So that will be really good. It’s not that soon actually, but at least it’s something I can look forward to for a while.