St. Fagans and Cardiff

Took the bus out to St. Fagans for the day. It’s a cute little Welsh village with part of a castle and amazing gardens. There were fields and fields of daffodils.

This is a wall painting on the inside of a Celtic village hut. It looks like a guy either shooting a bow and arrow or killing another guy. I somewhat doubt the authenticity of these drawings since there is also a heart and the word Hi.

Then back to Cardiff for some shopping. My credit card hates Cardiff, but the rest of me loves it. I bought some tights (all the Welsh girls wear thick tights under mini-skirts and boots and I was going to attempt it), a cap, and a shirt. I also got a tank top without realizing the store was Benetton, which I have always somewhat associated with the devil because of their crazy shock advertising. Anyway, it’s a nice tank top.

Oh, and there’s also the equivalent of the Dollar Store here and its called Pound Land. Haha.

WALES WORLD CUP HOPES IN RUINS

Back in Cardiff for a football match. I just want to say that the train system is evil. Sometimes it’s really nice, but half the time they’re doing maintenance or something so we get shunted onto a coach for an hour and a half between like 5 stations and end up missing all the next trains. Also, if I’d wanted to take a motion sickness-inducing coach I wouldn’t have paid the £20 extra for the train. Hate.

Anyway, the football match was at the Millennium Stadium which is huge. We only filled maybe half the place and there were 20,000+ people there. Instead of hotdogs and US stadium food, they sell pasties and Roast Ox chips which are actually not bad.

The match was Wales v. Finland and it was horribly depressing because despite the fact that we had the ball the whole time, no one could shoot, and the 2 times Finland had the ball, they scored. There was a lot of swearing from the guys behind us and I wanted to scream at Wales to STOP CROSSING THE BALL IN FRONT OF YOUR OWN GOAL! God, that kills me.

So at the end, 0-2. :( The headline of the paper the next day was: WALES WORLD CUP HOPES IN RUINS. Haha.

Still, it was fun and a random guy hit on us which was pretty hilarious.

We tried to visit the Brains brewery, but it was all blocked off and had danger signs and fences everywhere.

So we went out to dinner, then visited the omnipresent SPAR to buy alcohol and went back to our gorgeous hotel to drink and play travel-size Cluedo. I’m never drinking Brains SA beer again. It is the most disgusting beer I have ever tasted and I have no idea why I drank it.

Rugby

This sport may actually be more violent than American football. The players tend to form a gigantic, connected mass and just run straight at each other. They end up in a huge pile of bodies and somehow keep getting the ball out to one team so they can make runs (tries) into the endzone.

It is immensely entertaining and unlike American football which pretends it will only last an hour and then stops the clock every 5 seconds, rugby plays straight through for two 40 minute halves and then it’s over.

And the guys wear hilarious tight shorts.

Went to the pub to watch the last match of the Six Nations and it was the Best. Match. Ever!

Okay, so Wales lost to Ireland. 15-17. But it was still awesome. Everyone was even more aggressive than usual and there was a fight within the first 50 seconds.

We scored all of our points off penalty kicks. ♥ Stephen Jones. (Haha, there are so many Jones’s on the Welsh team they have to go by both of their first initials on the jerseys.) Ireland got in some good tries, and it may be disloyal to the Welsh team, but I have to say that I love Ronan O’Gara. He’s the fly-half for the Irish, which is like the kicker, same as Stephen Jones is for Wales, and he’s just awesome.

In the last 3 minutes of the match, Wales was winning 15-14 and then Ronan O’Gara made a kick and it was 15-17. So in the last play, Stephen Jones had to try to kick from practically half field and it came up short. I think Wales ended in 4th place, but the way they do rankings is really strange.

Ireland got the huge rugby cup and Ronan O’Gara and Stephen Jones were really adorable and switched jerseys so there was one person in the red Welsh jersey up on the podium with the cup. Aww, sportsmanship :)

Harlech

Celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by drinking 1 gin and tonic, 2 pitchers of cocktail and 3 kinds of cider, watching The Departed and then deciding to take a day trip to Harlech instead of going to class the next day. So, of course, one of the professors for the class I was skipping was at the train station at 7:30 am for some reason and I had to hide in shame.

The castle was totally worth it though. By far the least destroyed one I’ve been to yet and it was set up really high on a hill, overlooking the coast. Owain Glyndwr laid siege to Harlech castle during his rebellion, owned Edward I, and took the castle as his own headquarters. He was pretty awesome.

Please note: Do not let your children fall off the cliff.

I bought a ton of stuff at the gift shop and we wandered the town which was incredibly dead.