NEW ZEALAND RUGBY!

Early Friday morning I caught the train to Cardiff to see Nicola (: The train was close to an hour late arriving in the city but once I finally arrived we headed straight to Starbucks to grab a bight to eat and a coffee to warm us up - it was absolutely pouring it down and incredibly cold (typical welsh winter weather!). Once I could feel my feet again we caught the bus to my mum's friend's house to drop my stuff off because that was where I was staying for the night. Once we arrived back in to town we met up with Nicola's dad who had driven a bus load of people down to watch the Wales V New Zealand match that was on in the Millennium stadium that evening. We literally had only spoken a few words with him before Nicola and myself were running up the street! He had just told us that the New Zealand team bus was outside the Hilton hotel and being us we headed straight in the direction of the hotel!

When we arrived there we were just in time - Richie McCaw (NZ Captain and all round AWESOME player) had just stepped on the bus! We then saw world class players such as Ma'a Nonu, Piri Weepu and Dan Carter (OMG!). I have all of this on video, so once I upload it on to some format I will post it on the blog asap!

Once that jaw dropping excitement had come to a close (and after Nicola and I waved the bus off!) we went back to Nicola's flat for some coffee and a chance to dry up before we headed over to the local Weatherspoons to watch the match! We lost - but it was a much better performance than the last two matches!

Early Sunday afternoon I met up with Nicola in town for some brunch in a little place down Castle Arcade called 'Madame Fromage'. I had a ham, brie and cranberry baguette - yuuum! We then headed over to the train station (absolutely stuffed!) and we saw when we arrived that the train was delayed. Whilst waisting time around the station I noticed that ex All Black captain Justin Marshall, was sitting down in the station's cafe! So after some planning, we headed over to him and had a picture and a quick conversation! The train eventually turned up an hour late and the journey just got worse from there! There had been an engine failure at some point so we were running on one engine, a tree had fallen across the tracks so the driver had to go out and move it, there wasn't enough power in the train to go up an incline so we had to wait for another train to come and pull us up, we eventually got up the hill but then they couldn't get air in to the train so we had to evacuate, when we arrived at Reading the last train to Egham had left over and hour and a half ago so we had to wait a further hour and a half to get a taxi back to the Uni. So a 2 and a half hour journey turned in to a 12 hour journey! At least I got home and have pictures of NZ players on my phone to keep me happy!