With all of the travelling in Europe that Syd and I have done, we felt it was time to spend a weekend in the UK...but that doesn't mean we were going to stay in England. Nope, we went to the land of the red dragon - Wales. The red dragon, or camyrdraed (sp?) is the national symbol of the country of Wales. It represents a long line of tudor kings - Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth who are Welsh descendents that also were rulers of England. Syd and I were most excited to visit Wales because it is renowned for having a high number of medieval castles. Little did I know that Syd had planned on us seeing 12 castles in a weekend, which sounds pretty impossible...but I figure, bring it on - right up my alley! ;o)We narrowly grabbed the train after work on Friday evening to go to Cardiff, Wales. Our hostel for the evening was a brief walk from the train station where we basically just dumped our stuff and went out on the town for late night eats, drinks and fun. We ate at a pub that used to be a theatre, so it still had balconies and box seats.
It was a really neat decor, so we tried to overlook the fact that it was a chain restaurant/bar. ;o) After that we went up the main club district and were drawn into a club that was flouresant lighting and everyone wearing bunny ears, and playing "girls just want to have fun". The bar was called Reflex, which was a total 80's bar with Mr. T on the wall, ghostbusters symbols, a rubix cube and pac man ghosts hanging from the ceiling, and don't forget the cheesy 80's hair band videos. I had good fun dancing in my own bunny ears, that were easily obtained by buying two 'cadbury cream egg' shots. 
Syd knew less of the music than I did, but enjoyed watching me mash it up. Later we learned that it too was a chain, but now I may plan a night out to one of its locations in London!
On Friday we checked out our first castle - Cardiff castle, that is located right in the middle of the city, right beside a main shopping street. We booked a tour to see the completely restored castle interior designed by William Burgess for Lord Bute (and his family of descendents). The rooms were so elaborately done. The smoking room was in one tower and was designed around the four seasons and the zodiac (with birds drawn all over the room as well as zodiac signs). There was also a children's nursery with nursery rhyme characters drawn all around the walls. The best room was the arabic room, that was a domed tower with wood and gold ceilings and gold walls and lush red carpets. Outside, the keep was quite unique as it was only accessible by crossing over a moat and climbing 50ft of stairs.After grabbing some provisions for our weekend car journey we rented our car and were on our way in the Welsh countryside! I'm sure Syd will describe his experience of driving with you, but I can tell you that getting used to driving on the left is quite hairy at first because you are unaware of your space, especially in some of the very narrow country roads. We made sure to check out one more castle on our journey to the next hostel, this one was called Castle Coch (pronounced 'core'). It was a fairytale (disney) castle if I ever saw one. It was set up in a hill, in the woods, with a drawbridge and big wooden doors. But what made it most unique was the pointed roofs on the towers - the only one of its kind! The interior of this one was also designed by William Burgess and would have been neat to see and compare to Cardiff castle, but it was closed when we arrived so we just at our dinner outside the castle walls.
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