{"id":168,"date":"2007-09-01T00:42:10","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T12:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/09\/01\/cardiff\/"},"modified":"2007-09-01T00:42:10","modified_gmt":"2007-08-31T12:42:10","slug":"cardiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/09\/01\/cardiff\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiff"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>One of the things I had hoped to do on this trip was go to the V Festival and the Reading Festival. We decided against it at \u00a3<\/font>150 each on eBay (with three days camping required), in part because the only band I couldn't see elsewhere was James, and I saw them in Edinburgh. The impact of the festival was felt today however, as we battled through a 2 hour traffic jam to get from Manchester to Birmingham.<\/p>\n

Once past the right junction, the pull of Edgbaston was great, and we slung-shot around B'ham on the M5 like a Klingon Bird of Prey around the sun in some movie about whales.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Wales, that's where we're headed! Tom soothed my tired head with a little<\/a> driving at this point, so I took the rare opportunity to take<\/a> some<\/a> photos<\/a> from the car.<\/p>\n

There is a \u00a3<\/font>5 charge to take the nice bridge that links the correct bits of England and Wales; it's free in the other direction. This tax seems a little unfair, as Cardiff (or Caerdydd as they call it in Cymrick) is cool. The hostel was nice: we eschewed the traditional Welsh dish (cheese on toast) for their second favourite, cowl (lamb stew). I also had some Welsh whiskey.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Entertainment was the pool table, and Cathy had some fun with long exposure shots on his camera.<\/p>\n

We wanted to do a tour of the Millennium Stadium, but it turned out the one day we were in town was a Wales vs Argentina rugby game, and there's no tour on match day. Well, why not go to the match? A Kiwi guy who worked at the hostel convinced us.<\/p>\n

We went for a very wet wander around Cardiff the next morning - the markets are amazing, but the National Museum was a little boring by comparison to others we'd seen.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The stadium was set up to look good on TV, even though it was half empty - giant flags covered the bottom section, which was where the ball ended up half the time<\/a>. The game was enjoyable - it had all the of the required elements: a close first half, a villain (an Argentinian who was sent off), some friendly locals to talk to (who suggested that the All Blacks had peaked too early) and a nail-biting last 10 minutes as the Argentinians almost clawed back from 20-27, finishing literally 10 feet from the try line.<\/p>\n

Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales, is pronounced \"comm-rie\". I wondered for ages so you don't have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things I had hoped to do on this trip was go to the V Festival and the Reading Festival. We decided against it at \u00a3150 each on eBay (with three days camping required), in part because the only band I couldn't see elsewhere was James, and I saw them in Edinburgh. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}