12 hours travel for a night out in Cardiff

Saturday night was Rae's birthday party. Since Rae lives in Cardiff this meant 45 mins on the bus and then a 5 hour train journey there, where we met up at her place in Penarth before getting the train back down into town. After a rather brisk walk we had a quick pint in the pub, which turned out to be unexpectedly full of Cardiff city fans. Thankfully having interviewed Si at the door they didn't enquire if the *rest* of us had any connection with Leeds, since they'd just drawn 0-0 and weren't feeling too kindly towards people from that part of the world. Very nice pint of Brains bitter anyway. We then gathered a couple of doors down for a very nice curry, indonesian in my case, which took rather longer than intended.

Rather stuffed we wandered across Cardiff to Central station via two more pubs where I was too full to actually drink more than 3/4 of a pint of another Brains beer (the Rev someoneorother), and got the train down to the bay to go out to a rock/metal night in a converted church. The music was pretty retro at first, and left me feeling a little old since I remembered so much of it from when I was a teenager, but then the crowd was mostly well into their 20s and 30s. It was fun anyway, though in the middle part of the evening the music got a bit obscure and rather unappreciated. As people's stamina and feet gave out we gave up around 1:45am even though the music had perked up (into stuff I didn't know, but the rest of the crowd did) and 9 of us got taxis back to crash at Rae's. We got up around 10ish to have chocolate cake for breakfast, and Adam kindly dropped us back at Cardiff Central again around 11:30 to get the 5 ½ hour train home. I was *so* glad to see the right bus was just waiting for me at the station and to get home for a much needed shower.

There were 17 of us for dinner eventually, once Dave and Cassi got un-lost. They're a nice bunch - Leanne was at school with Rae, and Dave was a local lad the rest of them met when they were all at uni in Bath. It's nice to feel like I'm beginning to get to know some of them better. And Rae and Adam's place is lovely - 4 bed victorian terrace in lovely decorative order, big kitchen and nice (ground-floor) bathroom for 650 a month. Ah, how cheap it is in Penarth compared to central cambridge! And how very sad of us to notice :-)

It's just as well train journeys seem to be so comfortably companionable for me and Mike though, since that's a hell of a long way to go for a night out!