The day started out with a large brunch at the Taf. We each had a version of the English Breakfast:
This is a typical English Breakfast meal - beans, eggs, toast, bacon, sausages, and tomatoes! It's similar to the American breakfast, minus the pancakes plus beans and tomatoes.
I had originally planned to take my friends to Tintern Abbey and another castle that I had never been to, but due to transportation issues we just ended up going to Caerphilly Castle instead. I had already visited Caerphilly Castle (as can be noted by this entry), but it was still nice to visit. We were blessed with gorgeous castle weather.
As I had mentioned on the previous entry, I managed to break my camera in the pouring rain in our venture to pick Christian up from the bus stop. We discovered that the camera was still functioning but the screen was broken. Although I couldn't see what I was taking pictures of, I ended up clicking away anyway. It was interesting to just let go for once and have some fun while taking pictures - I feel like often I get so caught up on how it looks that it becomes more like a chore.
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| Gorgeous Caerphilly Castle |
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| Picture credits to Jen |
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| Photo credits to Jen |
We have some hilarious pictures from this trip; we spent literally 20 minutes trying to take a 'jumping' picture of the 4 of us. We put Christian's camera on auto-timer and tried to jump at the correct intervals. We utterly failed. It's quite hilarious to see the pictures on Facebook, where you can click really fast through the album - it looks like we're doing some sort of weird dance. I wish I could share it on this blog, but I don't put up pictures of people due to privacy reasons - if you are Facebook friends with me, try to go find it! I think Christian put that particular album to public...
We headed back to the Cardiff Bus Station in time to go to the Medieval Village. We were joined by Alisha, Suwei and Alana - but the trip was actually quite disastrous! The Medieval Village was having a special Halloween event on that night, but due to the rain we ended up coming back early...and we were completely soaked. Waiting for the bus to come in the pouring rain with only 3 umbrellas to spare among the seven of us was quite momentous!
We came back to my room and somehow managed to fit all six of us (Alisha had gone to see a movie) in my tiny little place. We were all drenched from the rain so it probably worked to our benefit that the room was so cozy :) We had plans to go out to the Union that night and although none of us felt like going out after the adventure in the rain, the tickets were paid for so we had no choice. We pre-gamed a little bit in my room to our song of the night - Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA". Yeah, I know. I think all of us had been missing home...
We then headed to the Union; I almost always have fun with people from home, so it was really nice :) Christian and I did the usual routine of calling friends at home - we definitely took advantage of my free bonus International minutes that night ;). I think Christian left Brittni (one of our friends back home) a song on her voicemail about how she wasn't picking up...that's our group for you.
Here's a picture of the party scene, stolen from Alphonse's album:
The rest of us except for Alana came back to my room to play some games afterwards :) We had fun, to say the least! Christian and I ended up walking Suwei back to her 'student accommodations' (aka dorm); we then had a nice chat on our way back where I realized how much I had missed a good friend's company. I'll forever appreciate such walks when I get back to Penn!
Day 41 (Sunday, October 31, 2010):
The day started early despite the fact that we had stayed up quite late because Alphonse was leaving at 9am. I took a quick shower and walked him back to the station; then, I walked back to wake Christian and Jen up. We ate at Wok to Walk, which was an interesting British fusion Asian food...we then got on a bus headed to St. Fagan's!
It was my second time going to St. Fagan's...but this time around, we discovered the Buttery Castle, which somehow I had missed on my first trip there. St. Fagan's was gorgeous with all the fall colors:
We also had toffee apples there, which were absolutely delicious:
Christian even had two :) I bought one for myself and one for Alisha, which we enjoyed after dinner that day.
When we came back, we had some trouble with the bus so we couldn't have dinner. I escorted them back to the bus station, came back and had dinner with Alisha at the Taly Social.
That pretty much ended the weekend! I'm so, so behind on updates but hopefully I'll be updating again soon :)
