Cardiff on the Town

Alright, so. Yesterday morning I got up and was very happy that my knee didn't hurt! So I got up and ready and headed out to Cardiff castle. I was slowly making my way there when I saw a crowd of people outside of the castle. Then I looked into the ticket office and saw a sign that said the castle was closed today! Anyways I hung around, waiting for some parade that people were talking about, and finally a huge brigade of war veterans from Afganistan came out, as well as a band, huge army tanks and trucks, and Prince Charles! Yep, saw P.C. again, we're pretty tight now, no big deal.


It was really cool though all the locals were waving the Welsh flag and cheering and clapping at all the young guys who had just come back from war. Very cool, very sobering. Lots of people were crying and stuff it was quite cool. Then I wandered around some more and made lunch, then I caught the train down to Cardiff Bay. It was really cute down there, lots of cute restaurants, not quite as many cute shops as I thought there would be, but it was cute. Got to see the ocean so I was happy! Saw the church where Rhoald Dalh was baptized as well.

I met up with Katy and Jazz, two aussie girls in my hostel room, and we got ready to go out for drinks. Francois, from South Africa, lives here and offered to show us a couple of cool places, so we headed out in the (suprise!) rain. I was the only smart one and brought my rain coat; it didn't quite go with my dress but at least I was dry! The first place Francois took us to was a SUPER cute little cocktail bar, all organic and really original drinks, and the best decor I've seen in a 'pub'. Really, really cute place. We had different kinds of blended mohitos and collins', and they were unreal. Very cute place, I can't say it enough!

Next we went to O'Neils, an irish bar with some live music by a solo artist, playing guitar, bass drum, and this crazy like african drum too. He was very good, took requests from the crowd and everything, and played till after 1 am. So good! And cute too, but that's irrelevant... Anyways we met this guy Chris, from Cardiff, who was out with his very drunk dad and his dad's friends. Too funny! He was fully embarassed but laughed at his dad too, it was great. His dad's friends were Irish and Welsh, and they guessed I was from Canada, yay! The singer, on the other hand, though I was American (booo). Anyways Chris was consoling this crazy woman who had all her hash and rolling papers stolen, so we stole him away and he took us to Buffalo Bar, which was a pub inside a house, it was really cute. But before we got inside we saw this crazy barfight break out between one of the bouncers and a very drunk man. I don't even know what brought it on, but the drunken guy was trying to run through his friends holding him back, swinging at this bouncer, and then bouncer then proceeded to take his coat off, take his taser out (which Katy and I thought was a gun and we like gasped and looked at each other, but it wasn't), and get ready for this guy to come at him. It was actually quite scary, even his friends were like shit, he's gotta stop. Then the guy came around to the railing, and the bouncer leaned over and slapped him hard across the face, it was unreal! We all screamed a little, I definitely didn't see that coming. I thought the bouncer should of been the professional one and backed off, but nope! Anyways, really freaky, but we had 2 boys with us so we felt ok, and we stayed far away from it until we went inside. Once we got in it was really cute. We went out into the back garden, and Francois taught us this slaps drinking game that was so simple but really fun. Definitely bringing that one back! We hung out there until after 3 am, and then walked back to our hostel. Woke up this morning next to a cute guy I didn't know! Haha, but that's just the beauty of hostelling