Clearly for most of you, this blog page has been, for most of the time, very very quiet.. To the point that even myself started to wonder whether it was actually worthwhile having a blog but not updating it on a fairly regular basis.. Of course, being busy is almost always the party line for any excuses.. Well, I am indeed terribly sorry.. I may well vow to update this blog on a more regular basis than the occasional 'sorry' introductory lines, but I will not, because it seems that it would probably be a false promise anyway.. Either way, I can only promise to do my best..
Anyway, the last week was fantastic.. Of course, it was the complementary week off after the week of nights.. The seven-day midnight-to-morning shift was drenching.. It was exhausting.. But enough on that.. After the shift ended, that same morning I got home and took a couple of hours of nap, then got ready for the trip.. Ina had booked our flight around 5pm that evening, so I did not have much time to rest.. Plus, let's be honest, after that week of nights, I was a Batman - waking at night and sleeping during the day.. In fact, 5pm was just around my bedtime!
Day 1 : Cadbury World
We did not plan to go to this chocolate factory until the day we flew to Birmingham.. Not that we did not want to go, but we were unsure when to go.. We took the train from Birmingham New Street to Bourneville, which was about 15 minutes away.. Even the train station at Bourneville was coloured purple.. As a matter of fact, Bourneville is the hometown of Cadbury chocolate.. The trip included shows of the origin and travels of chocolate, free chocolate sampling in the factory and fun with chocolate! Honestly, I avoided playing with the dairy-milk chocolate 'liquor' since I did not want to risk my T-shirt stained!
Day 2 : Drayton Manor Theme Park
For some reason, both myself and Ina have become a big fan of theme parks.. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember a fan of theme parks until just under three years ago.. Of course, I have been to many theme parks before we got married, but I don't think Ina had been to one before we hooked up.. I can still remember the first time I brought her to a mini theme park in Salthill, Galway.. She was scared as a cat in a tin can the first time she was in a ferry's wheel.. But, believe me, it was the trigger of her thirst for theme parks!
Drayton Manor was somewhat a consolation as the original plan was to travel by train to Alton Towers.. But the journey was a little bit to far and ('luckily') the weather was not permitting either.. In fact, even in Drayton Manor, the weather was in the category of 'horrible'! It rained all day that we had to buy a raincoat.. Maybe, the weather was the factor that deterred us from taking all those crazy rides.. We only rode some of the coasters, but avoided most of them..
Drenched in rain, only the cheap plastic raincoat as coverEither way, it was a wet day but a fun one..
Day 3 : Warwick Castle
It was undoubtedly a better day.. The sun was out, the breeze was soft and the clouds were invisible! We took the train to Warwick and gambled our way to the castle, which was about 10 minutes walk from the train station..
We were greeted by Jolly Jester, the Princess and a knight (in shining armour!).. Paid the ticket and off we went to the castle.. There was a lot of scheduled performances that we did not want to miss and inevitable resulted us entering the Warwick Dungeon later in the day.. My personal favourite was the trebuchet and 'fireball' trebuchet shows.. We also climbed the 255-step towers and witnessed Ina breathless like her lungs had collapsed! That was a scene!
Archery class for 5pounds!
Day 4 : SeaLife & Walking with Dinosaurs
By this day, my sleep cycle has already come to terms with normality.. We headed towards the NIA on foot.. It looked quite far in the map, but was only about 20 minutes leisure walk from our Radisson SAS Hotel.. Ahh, the weather was gloomy but we were indoors.. No bother.. The SeaLife building was next to the theatre where we would be for the dinosaur show..
SeaLife is just another name for aquarium, as far as I was concerned.. Not that it wasn't fun, but at this stage it has all become the same to me.. Later in the afternoon, we walked to the NIA again and watched the ultimate show of our vacation - Walking with Dinosaurs.. The show had only one word to describe it - extravagant! Our seats were on the second row from the front and the view was great.. We had so much fun that the five days there were just a matter of flying time..
SeaLife Birmingham
T-rex in actionWe arrived in Limerick around one o'clock on Saturday.. We have about two days to sort ourselves out - rest and wash all clothes.. We will be traveling to Dublin on Monday to watch Riverdance in Gaiety Theatre.. I have always wanted to see this performance but only now I have the chance..
I will let you know the details after I come back..
Salam..
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