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Showing posts from February, 2015

Cardiff Castle

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Caerdydd Castle, or as us non-welsh speakers call it, Cardiff Castle.  This place was beautiful!   We spent the night at a great little hotel just down the street from the castle.  The Doctor Who experience really took it out of us.  So we grabbed dinner at a pub then went back to the hotel and all four of us, Brendan, Tiff, Porter and I piled into our little room with blankets and pillows and played Hearthstone for the rest of the evening.  Hearthstone is a game on the iPad and computers sort of like Magic the Gathering, but it's put out by Blizzard (the same company that does World of Warcraft.)  This weekend was really the perfect storm of Geekdom, and I LOVED it. We woke up to a blustery morning in Cardiff.  But we were so excited to see this castle we didn't care.  We bundled up and ran out the door.  Winter in England is cold.  Period.  Yes, it's warmer than Utah, but the dampness and wind just cuts through to the bone.  So we grabbed some warm drinks on

The Doctor Who Experience

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NERD ALERT!!!    If you do not like nerdy, Whovian type posts, avert your eyes, this much awesomeness can be contagious. The Tardis has landed!  After our early morning at Stonehenge and breky (Britishism for breakfast) at Bradford-upon-Avon we drove to Cardiff to the Doctor Who Experience.  To say we were excited is an under-statement.  You see, the Doctor Who experience is like the 8th Wonder of the World for Who fans.  Stepping into the tardis and flying through time and space with the Doctor, it's like a dream come true. Like it says, it's an experience so you really do need to experience it.  But I will do my best to tell you about it.  You walk in and there are a few displays.  It was Christmas when we were there, so they had all the monsters from the past Christmas Specials out.  There is also a cafe, and then the big blue doors to enter. The first part of the experience is an adventure with the current Doctor.  Think interactive haunted house sty

Stonehenge on the Winter Solstice

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The day of the Winter Solstice we got up before the sun and drove out to Stonehenge.  I had read on the internet that the solstices are the only days that Stonehenge is opened up to the public because it's a place of religious significance.  This meant that instead of walking around the stones behind ropes, we could actually walk up to the stones, walk among them, and touch them.  I was like "sign me up!" I told Porter and our friends that it wouldn't be muddy, so they didn't need to worry about what they wore.  Ha!  The joke was on me.  Apparently, the visitor center was torn down and is being rebuilt further away in order to return the site to a more natural state, but this meant we had to park a mile a away and tromp through a sheep pasture to get there.  Sheep pasture = lots of sheep poop, you do the math.  It was not a pretty site, especially for my new pair of chucks. It was crazy!!!  There were so many people.  Lots of music, and people da