Cardiff in 24 Hours

Back in November, I bought me and Joe tickets to see Russell Howard's Wonderbox tour in Cardiff. February seemed to roll around pretty quickly and yesterday we found ourselves hopping on a train and whizzing off to the Welsh capital. Seeing as it's less than an hours train ride from Bristol, I'm now questioning why I haven't visited Cardiff before because the shopping there is AH-MA-ZING. They have gargantuan versions of pretty much every shop I've ever heard of, and lots of little boutiques too. Unfortunately we were only there for 24 hours and I had already scheduled in one too many things for us to do, so a shopping spree was not on the cards (Although I did manage to sneak in to H&M and pick up a cute jacket before our train left this morning, but more about that in another post).

About six weeks ago I put together a rather informative spreadsheet detailing all the hotels in the city centre, and presented it to Joe who of course glanced at it, grunted, and picked the one at the top of the list. We therefore ended up staying in a deluxe suite at The Royal Hotel. It didn't come cheap but we got a king sized bed, 50" TV, a bathtub (very exciting for me), wine, hot chocolate, cookies, fluffy white bathrobes and a great location. The whole "hotel" thing was fairly new to me, seeing as the only hotel experience I've had in the past is cramming my whole family in to a room at Travelodge. So, to me, this place seemed prettyyyy luxurious (the staff were super friendly and helpful too, and it was all clean and fresh and whatnot).

After settling in, we decided to go for a little wonder round the centre.

Ok I lied, as soon as I saw the bathtub I made Joe run out to Lush with me so I could purchase a bath bomb, WHATEVER. There was a lot of cool street acts performing, and I was particularly impressed by this guy who played his violin whilst walking on a tight rope. Honestly, this is mind blowing to me because from age 7-10 I took violin lessons and it is hard, and I'm guessing walking on a tight rope is no piece of cake either. We walked along to the castle too, but unfortunately didn't have time to go in.

When we got back to the hotel, Joe got hold of my camera and snapped some shots of me having some down time... I've still got a lot to teach him about aperture and ISO but he'll get there one day. He also helped me photograph my OOTD which consisted of a Topshop dress, Primark bag, Urban Outfitters socks, H&M boots and Chanel lipstick.

We went for dinner at a bar/kitchen right opposite our hotel called The Yard. It was a really characteristic little place that serves the best burgers and cocktails I ever did taste. I'd never even heard of a Passion Fruit Mojito before but this place did them and they were so yummy I had to get two. Ok, it was actually 2-4-1 and I only asked for one but she gave me two and I was too awkward to give one back. 

 With absolutely no help from Google Maps, we headed over to the Motorpoint arena to discover that we actually had really good seats. I'd never seen a comedian live before, but the atmosphere in the arena was definitely a positive one and Russell Howard proved to be even funnier live than on TV. I got a bit confused during the interval when people started to swarm towards me to get there photo taken with the guy sat in front of me, until I was informed that it was Joe Calzaghe, a famous Welsh boxer who also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing! As expected, the show was the highlight of the trip because let's face it, sitting in a massive room and laughing non-stop for two hours is a pretty fun thing to do. 

When we got back to the hotel it was time for a late night bath with my new bath bomb. I don't really know anything about bath etiquette so I just filled up the tub with hot water and chucked the egg in. The glitter started to disperse in to the water straight away, before it started fizzing and rolling around the tub, turning the water an offensive shade of yellow and producing a thin layer of bubbles. I thought this was all pretty magical, but apparently from a boys opinion "it looks like your taking a bath in your own piss". Charming.

 Whilst we were wandering around the centre, I spotted a little café called CrepeAffaire and made a mental note that we must have breakfast there. Of course, when I say mental note I mean I blabbered on about it until the following morning when I marched us over there. It was almost impossible for a former fat girl to choose from the choice of sweet and savoury crepes and waffles, but in the end I went for "I'll Have What She's Having", which included strawberries, nutella, whipped cream and strawberry sauce. YUMMY. Joe went for a savoury ham and cheese crepe which obviously wasn't worth photographing, but you can see it lurking in the shadow of my gloriously calorific breakfast. 

All in all, I had a lovely 24 hours in Cardiff and was actually surprisingly sad to leave it behind. I'll definitely be returning soon to embark on a real shopping spree, try out some more eateries and maybe visit the bay. Have you been to Cardiff?

KJ xo