Back to Cardiff Bay

I am still working in Cardiff and staying there for a few days every week but the unseasonal wet Summer and the long working hours have conspired to stop me from doing much in the way of exploration, or even walking much further than Wagamama which must be almost 100m away from the hotel.

So when the weather finally relented and I was able to escape from the office in time to catch the 5:44 bus back to the city centre I jumped at the chance.

My Cardiff hotel, the Radisson Blue, is on the south-side of the city centre, close the station. From there is it a simple and straight walk down to the Bay.  That's where the tourists go and I went to.

Pride of place there goes to the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) viewed here through the fountains on the other side of the road.

In front of the WMC is a large pedestrian area where the Torchwood Tower lives. It probably has a formal name but I think that the popular one is better.

For some reason Torchwood have allowed their secret entrance to be decorated with falling strawberries.

As a temporary display I appreciate the playfulness of it all but I would not want it to look like this forever.

This is a tourist area so it is full of restaurants. Many of these are chains, e.g. Wagamama and Pizza Express, but there is also Moksh which has good unusual food and excellent service. A highlight was the frothing vase served with the meal to add a delicate scent to the air.

I had been there before and will go again.

I avoided the quick walk back to the hotel along Rhodfa Lloyd George and chose to loop back via James Street instead. I had planed to walk the long way via Corporation Road (you know you are in an commercial area when roads are called this) but a whim, or a wish yo get back faster, took me up Dumballs Road instead.

That proved to be something of an experience.

This is a bus route (I saw bus stops but no actual buses) and was quite busy so I was not worried but the low cost housing and the light industrial properties made it quite obvious that I had left the Bay.

The clincher came when a Hummer with a personalised plate drove past me and in to the estate. I may be wrong but I think that I know how the owner got the money to buy it.

Drawing close to the hotel and the station there are two large traffic islands so isolated from the rest of the city that only tramps go there. Tramps and me. One of them has the rather jolly water feature that deserves far more than to be abandoned to an urban race track.

Cardiff has still not done enough to convince me that I would want to live here but it has proved to be a reasonable place to work for the last year.