Monday, November 22, 2010

Odyssey to Cardiff

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing ok and what not. As previously posted I made a trip to Cardiff in southern Wales. To be honest there is no word I can think of that can possibly sum up my time in Cardiff. Enough hamming up how great it is and let me begin to tell my tale lol. We left Friday afternoon at 4:16pm. The train trip didn't go as planned however. After we changed trains in Birmingham we got stalled halfway to Cardiff. A freight train fell off the tracks and they had to bring in a rescue train from Gloucester, which was not too far out but it took over 2 1/2 hours to clear it before our train could move again. To make matters worse because of how long our delay was the train was forced to dump us all at some random station in the middle of Wales at 9:30pm. Luckily a train picked us up about 15 minutes later and took us to Cardiff. We arrived at our Hostel close to midnight and we all decided to just go to bed. Now I said this trip was amazing didn't I??? Well that is about to be explained so just hang in there. Saturday we spent the day in the City itself. Cardiff in general is not a big capital most people think of and it is really dense so moving around there is quite fast and simple. During the day we saw Cardiff Castle, which was great. I love castles and this one has quite a history to it. I wont delve into it's history but I will mention that in the walls of the castle and in the walls of the keep there is still in tack stone bricks of the old Roman fort that was originally there before the Welsh retook after the Roman departure from Britain. That was cool to see but moving on me and my friends spent the day in the city centre walking around site seeing.  That evening we went to a very nice restaurant called Cosmo. I had to place a reservation for dinner because of how busy it gets in the evening. The reason for that is that aside from an amazing assortment of Asian cuisine (I do mean amazing. It isn't any run of the mill Asian restaurant) it has one of the best views of the bay. It was breathtaking. However I was not able to take a picture of the bay from the restaurant due to us leaving in a rush from the Hostel to get there on time. After dinner we all spent a couple of hours ice skating at a little Christmas set up in the center of Cardiff. I think I had the most fun doing that. To be fair I was bloody terrible at skating but it was fun none the less and thankfully the skates fitted nicely so I was at least comfortable as I was doing butt plants on the ice. Once we had our fill of skating we all went out to a local bar for some drinks and dancing, which was very nice. On the topic of our Hostel, I really enjoyed it alot. It was clean, warm, friendly/helpful staff, and most importantly very very close to the epicenter of things in Cardiff. Sunday we used the morning to go see Cardiff Bay in full and in the sunlight. That was awe inspiring! you could see for miles and you could see in the distance some cliffs and houses on the cliff-side overlooking the bay. We left Cardiff that afternoon and made it home by 8:30pm that night. The weather in Cardiff was really cold, I mean really cold! It reached a stellar 38 degrees that day in the afternoon. Now I think I will show you all my collection of pictures I took there! :) I left a few small things out in my talking of Cardiff but the pictures will give you guys some fun surprises and hopefully raise some holiday cheer if you know what I mean :P. Enjoy!

*Well crap apparently I ran out of space for pictures on the blog here so that means You all will have to wait till I return to see the remaining pictures ><. However, I can still upload a couple and as seeing this is my last picture post. Let's make this a little festive shall we :)!








So till next time, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and I will keep on posting articles to talk about.
Cheers!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

November Update II

     Hello again everyone. I just wanted to make a short update thus far of things. Nothing really new on my end at the moment although I am making some good headway into my essays. But more importantly I had a fun evening yesterday with some of my friends. That evening we decided to go see Let Me In at the nearby cinema in town. I have to say that move was AWESOME!!!! hahaha I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a different sort of vampire movie. I can say that it kicks Twilight's ass in my opinion. Although to be fair each movie appeals to different sorts of people so it depends on your taste in movies. But nether the less the movie in my mind was great. I definitely want to get it once it comes out on DVD. Anywho... before the movie we all went to Nandos, a Portuguese type restaurant. I had Peri - Peri chicken, which is a Afro-Portuguese type flavored chicken. It was delicious! It was a nice sized portion that was barbecued and the meat fell right off the bone mmmm!  Anyway that is all I have to report for now. I shall get back on here after I get back from my Cardiff trip Sunday evening.

Cheers!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

November Update I

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? good! Thought so lol. Anyway I felt like coming on a giving a little update of my activities lately. School wise I have just been hauling butt to get my essays done with. I got 6 to write before I leave here in December. So far so good on them I will be finishing one tomorrow and I will be working on my second towards the end of the week. So for the most part I am doing one essay per week. Aside from school I have gone to a football match here which was awesome. You can see my previous post to get the details. I will be going to another football game Wednesday evening, which is going to be awesome. Last weekend I went to a huge fireworks and bonfire show in remembrance of Guy Fawkes's failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. It was amazing to say the least. As far as my plans for my remaining time here I am taking a trip to Cardiff, Wales Nov. 19-21, Salisbury / Stonehenge Nov. 27, Edinburgh, Scotland Dec. 4 & 5, and lastly to Dublin, Ireland Dec. 10- 12. I hope everyone is doing fine and I can't to wait to come back home. Till then cheers!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Football Game.

Hey everybody sorry for the lack of updates lately but I have been a little busy with things here. Now I got some free time to update the blog here. Last Saturday me and several of my friends went to a Leicester City football match against Preston North End. It was awesome!! We got some great seats and it was on our side that Leicester scored the winning goal for the game! They won it a epic 1 - 0. I loved all the local chanting and provoking the fans made at the opponents it was hilarious. The weather for the match was perfect, sunny and mild I couldn't of asked for anything better. Here are a a few pictures I took and a short movie I put together on my friends camera. Enjoy!

Cheers!
Joseph Reed





Here is the movie enjoy yourselves.