Arrival Date: 2013-04-09
Departure Date: 2013-04-11
Accommodation: Novotel, Cardiff Centre
For our short two-night stay in Cardiff for Helen’s birthday, we left on the Tuesday afternoon after lunch, and around 3 hours later we found ourselves in the hotel. The hotel itself was very nice, clean, and professional, it seemed mostly business-oriented, but the minibar was stocked, and the restaurant was inviting, so we were happy.
As we arrived fairly late in the day, we decided to just have a little walk around Cardiff for an hour or so, get some dinner from the local GBK (Gourmet Burger Kitchen), and settle in for the night, to prepare ourselves for a day of walking on the Wednesday.
The next day we woke up nice and early, Helen opened her birthday presents in bed, then we got ready for the day and made our way downstairs for some breakfast. Breakfast itself was great, very filling, everything was nice and fresh, and a very wide variety.
After breakfast, we went straight in to Cardiff, only a 10 minute walk away, and made our way to the castle for a look around. The castle was very impressive, right in the centre of the city overlooking the shops. Inside the castle walls was mostly just a large turfed area with a keep in the middle and a grand house to the side.
Climbing the stairs in the keep in the middle of the grounds gave great views of the surrounding area, you could see for miles. It was also fairly empty too, apart from a school party of French children.
After the keep, we visited the museum / manor house type building to the side. The interior was beautifully decorated, with extremely ornate walls and ceilings in most of the rooms… Grand fireplaces, exquisite artwork, and more. This is one well-decorated castle!
We took another long walk around the grounds, then stopped in at the castle café for lunch. After lunch, we decided to explore Cardiff in more depth. We managed to walk around the city for hours, finding all sorts of little arcades and alley ways with nice shops. We also had a walk around the library as it was a really lovely looking building, but unfortunately forgot to take some pictures.
Shortly before dinner, we walked back to the hotel (it was only a 15 minute walk from the city centre) to drop off the shopping we’d bought during the day, then walked back to the centre for dinner. We found a La Tasca in The Brewery Quarter, where they were having salsa dance lessons upstairs. We felt we’d done enough walking around during the day so we skipped the salsa class and just had a lovely tapas meal instead, after which we made our way back to the hotel and went to bed.
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