People often talk about not appreciating all their hometown has to offer, but I find the opposite to be true here in Cardiff. We love having a castle in the city centre – part Norman, part brooding Gothic, and free for residents to visit. We make the most of our free museums – St Fagans National Museum of History, an open-air living history attraction filled with historical buildings from across Wales, and National Museum Cardiff, which houses one of Europe’s best collections of impressionist art, not to mention the dinosaurs. It’s a rite of passage for every child in Cardiff to have a photo with the ageing woolly mammoths. Experiencing pop concerts, iconic sporting moments, and theatre shows just minutes from home, rather than having to travel hours away, will never get old.
Cardiff has many of the chain shops and restaurants you’d find in any city, but we also have quirky independent boutiques in the picturesque Victorian arcades, local street food vendors at Cardiff Market and pop-up events around the city, and a growing number of Michelin-starred independent restaurants.
eye35 / Alamy Stock Photo
And when you need a breather from it all, there are parks and open spaces aplenty. Bute Park in the city centre, Roath Park with its famous lake and lighthouse two miles from the centre, and the ancient woodlands of The Wenallt and Fforest Fawr (where you’ll spot the fairytale-style turrets of Castell Coch, meaning Red Castle, emerging through the trees) on the outskirts. It’s 40 minutes in one direction to the rugged coastline and sandy beaches of the Vale of Glamorgan or 40 minutes in the other direction to the dramatic mountains of the Bannau Brycheinog (Brecon Beacons).
For a capital city, it’s one of the friendliest places you could live or visit. People smile and strike up a conversation. “Cheers, Drive” when alighting a bus is such a popular refrain here that there’s been a campaign to name a street near the currently-under-construction bus station exactly this. We Welsh are a friendly bunch at the best of times, but perhaps this is also partly because Cardiff is where many people move for study or job opportunities and never leave. They don’t have family or childhood friends here, so they create their own networks. Most of the people I’m friends with now I’ve met in the last 10 to 15 years.
