Last of the Old Year

I know it's a new year, and usually it's not good to look back, but there were cool things that happened the past few days that I don't want to forget. So I shall write them down for the world to see.

They set up a fire show at the Cardiff castle on New Year's Eve. They set up flood lights around the grounds to light the place up before the show started. Our shadows we really clear against the mound on which the keep is built. So C-- and I played shadow fighting. He would shadow-punch me, and I would shadow-side-kick back. Except that sometimes I would accidentally kick at him, and not just in shadows, 'cause I'd get confused. The grounds workers liked it so much that they did some shadow boxing of their own!

The fire show was family friendly, but there was fire so it was cool. Before the real show, they had people twirling fire, and fire eaters. I'd never seen fire eaters before. It made me cringe a little. For the fire show, they had fire works and this metal frames that could light on fire. The best one was a phoenix that they lit at the end. Phoenix = heart!

We had an interesting time getting to Cardiff. We took a ferry from Dublin to Hollyhead and then a train from Hollyhead to Cardiff. The ferry was so cool! It had a movie theater screaning to movies. And a ton of restaurants, decks, lounges and even a gift shop on board! I bought a pulp detective novel which was cool because it was written in British, so I got to play "what do the British people mean." It was set in Edinburgh, and featured lots of local details and griping about tram works and the financial crisis.

The train from Hollyhead was absolutely packed. We barely squeezed into the landing on the last train car. We made friends with the other passengers, though, so that was alright. We did get seats after an hour of standing. In any case, I could look out the window. The fields of Wales were green and covered with Dippin' Dot Sheep, so called because they were many and looked tiny.

We had taken a bus from Cork to Dublin. It was interesting because instead of taking an interstate, it passed through many small towns. Pretty much each town had a stone tower, each more or less intact.

In Cork, on our last full day, we tried to walk to the Blarney Stone, which one is supposed to kiss. The snow had all melted, but it was threatening rain, so we didn't quite make it all the way. But we got to walk through a lot of country side, and we got our first sights of Dippin' Dot Sheep. And afterwards, we went to a pub and had a beer.