Cardiff - Hen Weekend

Last weekend I travelled to Cardiff for Dawn's hen weekend. I'd love to say it was a smooth journey, but it wasn't. I Caught the bus from Salford, what should have been a swift 20 minute non rush hour journey into Piccadilly somehow turned into an almost 40 minute journey of taking the massive piss slowness. I then had to rush with my awful suitcase on wheels to Piccadilly train station, legged it to the platform with about 3 minutes to spare. To find that the train was not there yet. But before I could weigh up the chances of being able to visit a near by concession for journey supplies, the train approached so I thought, I'll get something to eat on the train.
Oh more fool me, Arriva trains don't provide food OR drinks for their almost 4 hour journey to South Wales. (although it was apparent from the litter around my seat that the previous passengers had had the courtesy of Arriva refreshments).
Luckily I had thought to pack wine & mints for the journey (and a cup!) so I drank that... and arrived at Cardiff to find that everywhere in the station was closed at 11pm also!
Wow.
Then I got in a taxi, and the driver had no clue where I was going, even though I offered the postcode for sat nav (as all the taxis in Manc have sat nav), but he just decided to ask other taxi drivers at the station... needless to say when Dawn rang me 15 mins later, I was no where near where I should've been. At this point, bright spark taxi driver pulls out the sat nav and apologises (for being thick or not using it in the first place? couldn't really tell), so yeah, get to Dawn's quite late.

Day 2: Wake up fairly early and sit in the garden as the weather is beautiful, Helen made pancakes for breakie (awesome)- I had mine with lemon and chocolate spread! then it was time to crack out the margaritas!


After a few drinks we headed into Cardiff which is a pleasant 20 or so minutes walk from James & Dawn's house,(although a quick stop off at the local junk shop for a kitsch Pope plate was in order).
We had a good wander around the shops before stopping off at Zushi for some Sake and sustenance

I would say this prepared us for the walk home, but to be fair, we went to Cuba where we had Long Island Iced Teas and then jumped in a cab back to the house!
Where we fired up the barbie for tofu kebabs as well as Dawn doing a fab spread of tabouleh, raita and general salady goodness

This was then washed down with more alcohol... probably margaritas as we managed to grab some margarita mix whilst out in town, plus a few shots of tequila!


After the barbie we got a wee bit dressed up and decided to head back into Cardiff for a few cocktails. First stop was buddha bar, we'd passed it earlier in the day when it was really busy and as we approached we thought they were playing some decent DnB, but alas, that was the flat above the bar...the bar itself was barren at barely 10pm. we asked for cocktails and the barmaid informed us they didn't do them, at which point a smooth talking bar man said he could make us a funky buddha which was blah blah and midori... only to find a minute later, they were out of midori so he would substitute it for something else... ahh well

Dawn & Helen looking very bemused when the final concoction was brought over, I know it had Blue Curaçao in it... hence the colour
After that we headed to Inncognito

another bar that does cocktails, which was also surprisingly empty, but still took the barman about 15 minutes to make a round of cosmopolitans because they had run out of Cointreau, but at least we got a discount. We sat out the back of the bar, where you could actually hear yourself speak... no idea who they were pumping the music to, as it wasn't the 10 customers.
After there we headed to Buffalo, but this bar was charging £4 a person after 11pm (although I completely understand why) it was no good for us hens who were only going to have one drink in there, so we headed off for somewhere else and ended up some place random, there were plenty of restaurants with outdoor seating so we ordered a round of G&T's and V&T's (after the obligatory tequila slammers)

Natasha had along with the lovely medals brought a selection of miniature plastic instruments including a Harmonica, Kazoo, Football rattle and Mini saxophone.




After this we grabbed a cab back to the house where we had left a few small potatoes on the barbie which were now cooked to perfection, and ready to dip into coleslaw and such. We sat out until about 1am when it got a wee bit chilly and Natasha had to drive back to London the following morning at 7am! Crazy lady!

Sunday am, we had a full cooked breakfast courtesy of James: bacon, eggs, hash browns and other meat n stuff... i was so full. Then Helen left to get her 8 hour coach!! (Crazy lady), then after a few hours of garden lazing (and apparently burning), I went home also!

Goodbye Cardiff, I was quite sad, could have happily stayed a few more days with that awesome weather :)

London Again... Part I

Back in April we took another trip down south to stay with Jen in London. We had tickets for a gig/event so it was not entirely through choice we ended up being there over the Easter Bank Holiday (one of the peak times of the year to visit, bar Christmas). As usual we travelled first to my mum's in Nottinghamshire who would be dog sitting for the weekend, and travelled via Chesterfield - high speed train meant we were in London in a little over 2 hours! Upon arriving in London it was time to buy our travel cards for the weekend and to find out that TfL being as clever as usual have chosen this weekend to close several tube lines, which wouldn't normally be a problem except that in most cases they couldn't be bothered to put on rail replacement buses - which when trying to get from areas of central London, the buses became dangerously overcrowded, more so than I've ever seen before.. very surprised there were no accidents!
On the Saturday, Jen being a member of Liverpool FC's London Supporters Club she was going to a pub to meet other members and watch the game, on the spur of the moment we decided to stay on the train to Kew Gardens. only a couple of minutes walk from the train station through very 'leafy suburbs' (think how London is portrayed in Hollywood movies), we found it very easily: entry is £13 adults, £12 concessions and under 17's free when accompanying an adult (entry to the palace is extra). I think we both had no clue how big Kew was and you could easily spend a full day there (we didn't arrive until lunchtime). Although it was overcast most of the day, there was plenty to see indoors as well as in the grounds

One of my favourite parts was the Japanese area with the pagodas and cherry blossoms, although the tropical/rainforest areas was a close second

There is also a Sky Walk which is basically a rather large platform that you climb around 180 stairs to reach the top, then walk around in a circle ish shape near the tree tops, this is where you might notice that Kew is under a flight path, with incoming planes being so low down you can see the wheels lowering!
We ended up spending a good 4-5 hours at Kew including lunch time - if you're on a budget avoid the 'restaurant' and head for the Café - we paid about £4 for a jacket potato the size of a small melon - very tasty and great value!

Later on that evening we went to the Ether Festival at the Royal Festival Hall to see Royksopp supported by Fever Ray. Absolutely amazing, mind blowing gig - once again Royksopp did not disappoint live, the amazing energy they throw into their live performances always impresses me. They played a selection of tracks from each album, including all the favourites such as Eple, So Easy, Sparks, 49 Percent, Remind Me, Only This Moment - but the gig really got going once the newly released single Happy Up Here was played, it's worth noting that this was a seated venue, but all it took was one man on the front row to start dancing and gradually the whole crowd was up, the security towards the middle and right of the stage were really chilled and people were allowed to get up and walk to the front to dance and take photos, but on our side there was some jobsworth usher who's sole intent that night was to try and ruin the gig for a handful of people. Long story short she kept trying to stop my friend and I from taking photos when Royksopp had specifically asked the fans to take photos and upload them to their website! I'm a reasonable person but when she then happily let the men in front of me take photos and the guy sat behind me film it I was non impressed to say the least! So towards the end we decided to ignore her as it seemed very much like victimisation when at one point I could count 20+ people within 10 feet of me openly photographing the show and still she only singled out us! This was the biggest let down of what was one of my top 5 gigs of all time.

Anneli Drecker joined Royksopp on stage for most of their set and was crazy, really working the crowd up

They were also joined by Swedish singer Robyn who is very popular from what I could tell by the crowd reaction.

One of the support acts Fever Ray were also amazing with some very weird costumes and a great light show

Definitely worth checking out if they come to a city near you!

London part 2

On our second day in London, we got up slightly hung over and headed into central London, first stop Oxford Street. With the credit crunch and recession looming it was sale central. We stopped off at Debenhams to browse their sale with up to 25% off, we got loads of bargains and did a fair bit of Christmas shopping. After that it was off to Russell Square to check out the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum in the pouring rain, unfortunately it was sold out for the day, so we dried off by browsing the permanent collections and realised that interspersed with the very old was the very new in the form of Statuephila - Contemporary British Sculpture including Damien Hirst's painted skulls, Antony Gormley's Case for an Angel 1 and my favourite Ron Mueck's mask II - which along with the easter island statue fell foul to the "crushing your head" thing



After grabbing a bite to eat in the nearby Museum Street, we headed off towards the Barbican as we had tickets for the snappy titled This Is War! Robert Capa at Work, Gerda Taro On the Subject of War. it was a very interesting photographic exhibition, concentrating a lot on Capa & Toro's coverage of the Spanish Civil War, but also down stairs included photos and video pieces based on more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought maybe the upstairs section (Capa & Toro) could've been better laid out, it wasn't clear where the exhibition started and finished, and there were several shots that were displayed twice for reasons unknown. But if you're in London, definitely worth a visit. We also managed to visit the Curve Gallery on the ground floor of the Barbican which was hosting Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Frequency & Volume which is a large scale installation piece contains radios (that seem to double as projectors)that you walk past, depending on the size and strength of your shadow on the wall, the projectors tune to various radio frequencies, displayed on the walls. It's quite surreal listening to a mish mash of local, pirate and national radio stations mixed in with emergency services radio frequencies etc... a lot of fun to be had though - great for kids.

It was getting on for after 6pm at this point, so we took the tube a couple of stops to Brick Lane, in my old neighbourhood of Whitechapel to meet with Julia and Carly who I hadn't seen for well over 2 years! We had a couple of drinks in the Archers pub and then went for a curry. Sorry can't remember the name of the curry house, but as usual the standard was high whilst being less that £10 a head including drinks.

Monday was our day home but we still had the morning to kill, so we checked out the Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square. I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint as one of my favourite Leibovitch photos of the White Stripes was on display

it also contained a variety of "famous" images and faces along side personal photos of the late Susan Sontag. Again, this is definitely worth checking out if you have £12 to spare.

After this there was not much time to do anything except grab a quick bite to eat anc head back to St Pancras for what turned out to be a rather uneventful train journey home.