Backblogs: Thursday in Wales

7:30 was too early to set an alarm for me; I should have known that.

The alarm went off and it did, indeed, rouse me. However, I fooled myself into thinking I could doze for just a second and then get up. 8:15 was a better time to wake than 8:45, but it still forced Ryan and I into a tizzy to get ready in time.

We weren’t even the last on the bus before 8:30, and we needn’t have hurried, since the professors didn’t show up until 9. Once we got on the road almost everyone fell asleep. Mornings don’t agree with college students, and this one was no different.

I woke up as we hit the border and stayed awake into Cardiff. We arrived at our hostel, threw our bags into a spare room, and headed into the city. We looked for a place to grab lunch as we meandered through the city center. We found an all-you-can-eat Indian place, which wasn’t bad, but we were the only people there, which made it a little weird. The place couldn’t have been open for more than a week with the way the owner was hovering around, so the service was good, but a little overbearing.

Since we were most of the way to the Welsh National Museum, we headed that way. It was a decent sized place, but it was an odd mix of art and natural history, literally: Natural history was on the bottom floor, art on the top.

If we hadn’t just been to the National gallery and the British Museum, I think it would have seemed better. However, since both of those places were fresh in the mind, the Welsh cousins seemed a little paltry. Not that they didn’t have nice things, they just didn’t have as much or as nice of things.

We headed back to Cardiff Castle for our tour, by way of coffee, since the afternoon was winding down before our eyes. The castle was incredible, built on an old roman site and formerly the home of a very rich family. Pictures were forbidden, but Blake took my camera and got some great shots surreptitiously. The gold paint was all 22-karat leaf and money was clearly no object. I was floored by hour intricate the designs were, but when the owner is one of the richest men to ever attend Oxford and given that they used the castle as a summer home, I suppose the sky is the limit.

Dinner was a three-course meal at an Italian restaurant in one of Cardiff’s covered markets, tab covered by IES. The food was great, the wine was decent, but free flowing, and it was nice to see the group finally starting to mingle a bit. I had the veal, which was good, and enjoyed tiramisu for the first time.

We all split up after dinner and headed to various areas of the city. The group I was in was of tow minds about our destination. Some wanted to dance, others just wanted to find a quiet pub and pass the evening. The dancers won out and we ended up at Flares, which was the trashiest place I’ve been to in a long long time.

It isn’t that I don’t like the idea of a real 70s disco still existing in the heart of Cardiff, Wales, its just that the whole place seems gratuitus (See the picture of the men’s bathroom sign [Dudes]). Maybe the over-the-top atmosphere and dance floor that looked like a permanent Twister board was authentic, either way, the place was hilarious and we were the youngest people there by many years.

The group fractured again, and I ended up at the pub next door, much to the chagrin of the strippers who really wanted me to head one door further to their domain [Free Cover!]. I was starting to fade and couldn’t see hanging out in such a bar as this (yuppies abounded and the prices showed it) so I headed back to the hostel for the night.

As much as I wanted to stay up for the VP debate, the day had just taken too much of a toll on me. From what I hear, Palin only succeeded in that she lowered expectations so much that even she couldn’t have possibly missed exceeding them. Not exactly what I’d call Must See TV.