Road trip

During the Easter break my friends and I decided to go on a road trip!

We left Monday and took the bus to Manchester where we met up and stayed with one of our friends. Once we had put our luggage away we went the Trafford Centre for lunch. The Trafford Centre is this fancy mall, that reminded me of the West Edmonton Mall, where different sections of the mall were themed - they had even made the food court look like you were on the titanic.

For lunch we ended up going to Nando's which is this chicken restaurant that seems to be very popular over here. I ended up getting some chicken wings which were good, but they didn't have honey garlic, so I ordered lemon herb which according to the menu "barely registers on the heat scale" but turned out to be a tad bit too spicy, so apparently the only ones that wouldn't have been too spicy for me was the plain wings - which that just isn't any fun - so needless to say next time I'll probably stay away from the wings and just go with a half/quarter chicken. After lunch to the Imperial War Museum which was an interactive look at war, as every 30min or so the lights were dimmed in the whole place and on all the walls above and around the exhibits they would show these videos filled with images and pictures from the war.

After the museum we then went out for dinner to an Indian restaurant called Akbar's. I had no idea what to order, so my friend who had been there before ordered the food which was amazing. We ended up getting a variety of appetizers which included seekh kebabs, keema semosas and chicken tikka, all of which were amazing, even though the kebabs were spicy, but still oh so good.

Then our main dishes included chicken korma, lamb and potato balti and a traditional curry - all of which were were fantastic and it was neat the great variety of tastes we had (from the sweet korma to the spicy curry).

They even brought us this huge family garlic naan!

After the great dinner we were stuffed so we just drove around Manchester and checked out some of the sights.

The next morning our friend made us a wonderful full traditional English breakfast!

After the feast we decided to go walk it off, so we went and walked around the downtown area.

Afterwards we decided to go watch Alice in Wonderland at the IMAX in 3-D. The movie was good and it had some really good 3-D effects. After the film we went back to our friend's place and had a big Indian feast with her parents. The food was amazing and fortunately they knew ahead of time that some of us can't stand too much spice, so it wasn't too spicy :)


On Wednesday we left Manchester and drove to Wales. We drove along the water a bit at the north end of Wales before we headed south through Snowdonia National Park.

It had been a nice day for driving, over cast and a bit rainy, but shortly after we entered a national park called Snowdonia it actually started hailing a bit and then next thing we knew it was snowing!

As we drove further into the park the snow started tappering off as we drove through the mountains and fortunately it didn't accumulate too much on the roads (although we found out that later in the afternoon they actually closed the road, so I guess we lucked out). We ended up deciding to stop for lunch in a little village called Portmeirion, which one of my friends had heard about. When we arrived we found that it was very much a tourist attraction and that this was one of the few attractions in the UK which had a gate fee. We debated paying it since it was still overcast and a bit rainy, but we were hungry so we paid and went in and checked out the city. The city is quite unusual as it isn't what you would expect of a Welsh (or even UK) village as Portmeirion was built to look like an Italian villa.

We definitely got the Mediterranean feel as soon as we walked in with all the buildings were stuccoed in bright pastel colours.

It was still drizzling a bit as we wondered around the village, so we found a place to sit and have some lunch. After lunch the rain had basically stopped so we explored the city even more. After spending about an hour or so checking out the village we were having such a good time and the sun was actually starting to come out so we went for a little walk on one of the hiking trails they have.

We made it out towards a little light house and then headed back.

As we walked the weather started to act up as it was nice and sunny then when we made it to the light house it was super windy but still sunny, but a few minutes later it started hailing! The hail didn't last too long, but for the rest of the time at Portmeirion it was sunny for about 10-15min and then would hail for 5min and then was sunny again...it was really quite strange. After spending our whole afternoon in Portmeirion we got back on the road and made it to Machynlleth where we had booked a hotel. Machynlleth was what I expected a traditional Welsh village to look like.

After we checked into the White Lion Hotel we went downstairs and checked out the Pub for dinner but we weren't too crazy about the cost and selection, so we went and wandered around town looking for somewhere to get some dinner.

After asking at a few places someone told us that we should go to Skinner's Arms which was the pub that all the locals go to for dinner. We headed over and could tell that they must have some decent food since more than half the tables were already reserved and most of the other tables were full, but we managed to find a table and had a good meal.

There wasn't much going on in the town so after dinner we headed back to the hotel and watched some videos that we had brought with us.


The next morning we got up and had our complementary breakfast, which was way way better than any complementary breakfast I had had before. They had a tone of cereals, juice, milk and coffee laid out and then came over and took our order. I ended up going of course with a full English breakfast, which was again amazing.

The breakfast was very much like the one that I had in Manchester, except here they actually deep fried the bread, which I know sounds kinda gross, but I found that the fried bread was amazing with the egg as it seemed to taste better than just regular toast and eggs (and probably does an even better job at clogging the arteries). After breakfast we checked out and headed for a leisurly drive towars Birmingham. It was another good day for driving as it was again overcast and drizzly. Just outside of Machynlleth we encountered some construction, which made us a bit worried since we didn't want to have to turn around and find a different route. But as we approached we noticed that the construction was on the cattle grate and that they had put a detour sign up pointing us to go through a gate. The gate also had a sign on it telling us to close it behind us, so I jumped out of the car and went through the mud and opened the gate for us to pass, and then held it for another car (going the other way) before closing and getting back into the car.

I dunno why but I was pretty excited, I think it's probably because it's something that  I have only seen done and happen in movies, so it was pretty cool. Anyways after that excitment we were back on the road and as we drove up the mountains we started to notice a bit of hail .. and then some snow...yes it was snowing again, even though we were taking a completely different road and weren't even in Snowdonia!

This time it was snowing more than the other day and the snow was actually accumulating on the roads and there were a few times when I wondered it the car was going to make it up the snowy hills...but it did.

As we drove there were sheep all over the place and I found out that unlike in the movies when you drive up to the sheep who are standing in the road they actually quickly run off the road!

We drove around and ended up going to the Clywedog reservoir and dam, which is apparently the largest solid concrete dam in the UK.

Along the way home we made another stop, but this time at a rest stop where our friend who was doing all the driving let me and another one of my friends drive (around the parking lot).  My other friend has driven manual cars in Europe, but wanted to see what it was like being on the other side of the car, and seemed to adapt very well, as expected. Then it was my turn. I not only had to deal with being on the other side of the car, but I have only tried to drive a manual car once in my lifetime (about 8 or 9 years ago) ... and that initial experience didn't go too well. So I got in and started up in neutral and then shifted to first and started going. It seemed to be no problem as I managed drove around the parking lot (where I even got it up to second gear!). The only time I stalled it was when I was done and idling, so it went well (in my opinion any ways :P) and so I was all ready to jump on the motorway and get us back to Birmingham...but I didn't.

We ended up making great time and got back just before rush hour. After I got home I went through all of our pictures (mine and my friends) as we had almost 400 (over 250 at Portmeirion alone!) and very few duplicates, actually a lot of them are pretty good and some are even fairly artistic.

Anyways that's all for now,

Jeff

*Word of the Week: "dual carriageway" is apparently what the English call a "divided highway". 

March

Hey all! It's becoming a bit busier these days (in school and with social outings), which means that I actually have stuff to write; when I have a chance to write. Here's a brief summary of the main things that I did since my last post.


On the Feb 20th it was one of my friend's birthday, so we ended up going out on Monday (Feb 22nd) to celebrate. How we've been doing it is that the Birthday boy always gets to pick the restaurant, and so this time we went to a Japanese restaurant in the Bull Ring called Mount Fuji. I ended up ordering the Teriyaki Chicken & Tempura Bento with Chef's Selection Sushi, and to drink I just asked the server what she thought would go best with my meal. They brought me my drink which looked like a small shot glass (50ml) filled with choya plum wine, but found that it was amazing as it just tasted like fruit juice (but apparently it was at least 10% alcohol content), so good thing they didn't bring a bottle. They then brought the Chef's selection of sushi, which were all really good, but all that I remember is that there were three different ones and only one looked like a typically fish sushi roll (with the seaweed wrapping) while one of the others was something like a prawn with rice and then the other might have been a scallop or squid (i don't think i would have known the difference). The only part of the sushi I wasn't crazy about the ginger that i ate (since apparently culturally your suppose to have after each type of sushi), but i think my friends just wanted to see me eat the raw ginger. I then got my bento and for those who don't know (which was me prior to getting it) Bento basically means individually packaged or severed dishes in a box. Thus my meal consisted of this fancy box (unfortunately you don't get to keep - looks like they cost about £25-30 just for the box) where inside each part of my dinner was in it's own separate container.

There was so much too it that i frequently got so confused since it was all so delicious, but the tempura was my least favourite part, while the Teriyaki chicken was the best Teriyaki chicken i have ever had (needless to say, i'll likely go back in the near future to have more Teriyaki chicken)! It was a great experience (although my hand did start to cramp by the end of the meal, since I forgot to stretch my hand prior to eating with chopsticks), but ultimately everyone really enjoyed the food and atmosphere, even though the restaurant is very small, it was well designed to maximize the seating.


Mar 1st it was another one of my friend's Birthday's so we decided to go to a different restaurant and ended up going to a French one right beside campus called La Bastille. Its a really neat restaurant with a bar in the front and fancy dinning at the back. We ended up ordering some frogs legs and I had Confit de canard with duck liver, sultana salsa and sweet red cabbage.

All the food I had was amazing and it seemed like a high end restaurant but with out the price. Near the end of the evening we started to hear some Jazz music, which we found out later that they have live Jazz music by a group called "Playing Django" every Monday night. We started to go every Monday night to hang out and listen to the music, and although its suppose to start at 7 we found that it's really about 9. We also recently found out that La Bastille carries lots of different Belgian beers, so we have now devised a plan to sample each of the beers on their list, but hopefully they don't change the beer menu or add any more to the list.


There was a day long optometry student festival, on Mar 6th, called Optfest in Cardiff. Several of the schools in the UK were represented, even Glasgow (which took over 12hrs on a bus). The day was filled with several sporting activities such as tug of war, football, rugby, dodgeball and netball. Overall in the events Bradford ended up winning, but Aston did quite well as we were 1st in netball (although its a girls only sport and our team consisted of one female), 3rd in dodgeball, 3rd in football and undefeated in rugby! Not bad all things considered and it was tones of fun! 

At the end of the day we all had a big dinner and went to the student union where we tried a bit of Ceilidh dancing (which is sort of a Celtic line dance). It was a great day and the optic society at Cardiff did an awesome job organizing the whole event and hopefully there will be a 2nd annual Optfest next year!

On Mar 13th my aunt and uncle were in town so we ended up going out for dinner that night. They hadn't been to Birmingham before we met down town, so they could see the city a bit and we ended up going to an Indian restaurant called Festival Balti. It was my first time going to an Indian restaurant and it wasn't too bad and the food definitely wasn't too spicy at all! It was really nice to see some friendly faces and it turned out to be a great evening.


Mar 14th I went back down town with one of my friends and we watched the world's 3rd largest St. Patty's Day Parade! I know it wasn't St. Patty's Day, but it sounds like they do the Parade the closest weekend to the actual day. The parade was held in an area of town that I had only recently discovered was called Digbeth (with is the Irish quarter). They festivities down there for about a week leading up St. Patrick's Day, but we didn't end up going to any of the pubs or any of the events this year, but next year we'll probably try to go to more of the events.

On the actual St. Patrick's Day (Mar 17th) I just went with some friends to an on campus bar called Einstien's since it wasn't nearly as busy as any of the off campus bars would be. Unfortunately they didn't have any green beer, but they did have a bunch of Irish beers at decent prices, so I had a cider followed by a traditional pint of Guinness. We had a good night, especially since we all had to be up for a 9am class the next day.

I had two assignments/essays that I had been working on all month and on the 19th I finally handed them all in. Typically you would think that after all the work that we would go out drinking that night, but instead we had a drink or two at the pub for lunch. That night went to the REP theatre and saw Arthur and George.

Unfortunately I was bit tiered from doing the essays, so missed a few minutes of the first half of the show, but found the second half of the show was captivating as I managed to pick it all up and all the pieces of the mystery seemed so slowly come together. I thought it was kind of odd that during the intermission they actually sell ice cream right in the theatre so you can actually eat it in your seats. I noticed it last time, but too late to do anything about it, but so this time we made sure to get some, so I grabbed some Cadbury's chocolate ice cream, which definitely hit the spot.


On Mar 24th after class at 1pm there was a school run eXperience trip to London. I ended up going with one of my friends and we took the bus and got to Covent Garden in London around 4. This was my first time ever in London so we wandered around and I saw a few of the main sights (Big Ben, Trafalgar square and the London eye).

We also saw some non typical sights, such as the covent garden market.

We then got hungry so we went to a pub called the Coal Hole for dinner.

I had a pint from Stonehenge Ales called Signs of Spring which was actually a green beer (a week late, but still works) and also finally some fish and chips that lived up to my expectations of UK fish and chips!

We then headed to the Lyceum Theatre where we watched the Lion King.

It was a great trip and I'm glad we went even though it was just an afternoon trip.


Classes then ended on the 26th for a three week Easter break!


That's all for now, but I'm not caught up yet! I still have some of my Easter break adventures to go (which I should hopefully have up shortly).


- Jeff -



*word of the week: "ATMs" in Canada are called "cash points" in the UK.