Blogs from Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, Europe - page 16

Dear Lynfielders, It hurts to send this, but here goes. It was a slightly overcast Saturday morning. Paul, Timmy P, Deebo, Josmar & Aaron left Auckland Hill to meet up with Stephen Hart, Jac & Fi to go to Millennium Stadium in Cardiff to watch the All Blacks destroy France. We left excited, but came back devastated. It also didn't help that we had to wait for over an hour for Timmy P after the game cos he got lost on his way back to the van...(even though there is only one main street in Cardiff). Haha. Here are some pics... Enjoy, Aaron... read more

After a suitable period of mourning, I am finally emotionally prepared to write of the rugby 'incident' that was.. Al, Bing & I decided we had 4 significant goals for the day: A) Collect our rental car and ensure we wern't ripped off and given a bus of some description B) Successfull arrival and check in at our dodgy Etap budget hotel and ensure the booking was valid C) Not being refused entry from Cardiff's Millenium Stadium with what could very well be pirated tickets. D) Win the game Meatloaf says '2 out of 3 aint bad' but his maths is awful. As is now history, we managed 3 out of 4. I will therefore focus on the good parts: Our car was double upgraded from a Modeo to an E Series Mercedes - picture attached. ... read more

The Rugby…Wales…England It’s been hard finding the time to do an update but here goes- We arrived in Cardiff and the first sign we saw was ALLAN it seems the Welsh have worked out what to do with their Allan’s as it means Exit. We loved Cardiff a good mix of the old and the new, the locals were also very friendly. We stayed at a farm B & B just west of Cardiff, the house was full of Rubgy fans so loads of fun. We caught a train into Cardiff for the Rugby and it was a sea of Red & White and Green & Yellow. We had great seats in the middle section on the halfway line right behind the press. We were a bit disappointed that the anthems were pre-recorded but we had ... read more

Our house refurb is finished at last and we have a tenant moving in on Monday, so we're off! I booked the RTW ticket last weekend, at Trailfinders. It's a Discovery Plus ticket, with 6 stop-overs: London - San Francisco - surface to Los Angeles - Auckland - surface to Christchurch - Sydney - Brisbane - surface to Cairns - Singapore - suface to Bangkok - London. The plan is to spend 7 days in California, 6 months in NZ, 6 weeks in Oz, and 3 weeks in Asia, although we may stay a bit longer in Thailand, see when we get there... That's about 9 months in total. We've sold our cars too! So we've been bombing around doing last minute trips in a shiny new hire car! We're off to Lancashire on Sunday to ... read more

Well what an adventure! We're only three days into our European escapade (aka Rugby World Cup tour) and we've so far encountered a flight delay in Bangkok (a seven hour layover allowing for three hours kip at the Bangkok Airport Novotel), the great Belarusian transit visa challenge (we wrangled a 48 hour visa in less than two), cold showers at our London hotel (thankfully we weren't paying the 150GBP tariff advertised in reception) and a fairly mean hangover for some of the group - they're working on a second as we go to print. Catching up with friends and family at The Victoria Hotel in Paddington on Thursday evening was very pleasant. It was a balmy evening reminiscent of Sydney in October, we stood, drank and chatted on the pavement outside and the drinks went down ... read more