The idea of Cardiff came into my head as during a recent workshop for one of our hotel brands, we highlighted the amazing service at one of my company’s properties, Hotel Indigo Cardiff. The hotel looked beautiful and located right smack dab in the city center. Cole and I hadn’t been to Wales yet, so decided to make a short weekend trip of it! The hotel lived up to the expectations and we had a wonderful stay there – if you ever find yourself in Cardiff, make sure you check it out!

We started off our city adventure at the Tiny Rebel brewery, an old firehouse that’s been converted to a local craft brewery. We watched a bit of the Wales-Scotland rugby game as it was during the Six Nations tournament. After a beer, we explored some of the charming arcades which have these adorable boutiques.

We weren’t starving so decided to grab some cheese and bread from Madame Formagge and enjoyed these while overlooking the castle. After our snack, we explored the castle grounds. The Cardiff Castle is a medieval castle built in the 10th century and located right in the city center.

After the castle, we checked out a few more arcades and then walked down to the Mermaid Quay, about a mile from the historical center of Cardiff. We checked out the Millenium Centre and then walked along the boardwalk before heading a cute restaurant we passed earlier, the Eli Jenkins, to warm up and get a bite to eat.

We headed back to the hotel to hang out and freshen up before dinner. Before leaving the hotel, we headed up to the restaurant, where the front desk had let us know they would have some local live music (my all time favorite). After enjoying the music, we got lucky enough to get the last seating at Cafe Citta, this quaint family run Italian restaurant. We had a delicious dinner and tried to check out a few more places before calling it a night, but it was pouring rain and so windy that we quickly decided to call it a night.

Sunday morning we woke up and headed to a few cute restaurants we spotted the day before that looked great for a quick breakfast. We grabbed some freshly baked scones from Barkers Tea Room and coffee from their sister restaurant nearby, Coffee Barker. Our final stop was grabbing some freshly made and absolutely delicious welshcakes from Fabulous Welshcakes (welshcakes are a combination of pancakes and cookies). While our time in Cardiff was brief, we loved the history, the arcades and boutiques and the great restaurants and cafes.

We would have loved some more time to explore the Welsh countryside, which is supposed to be stunning. We will have to make it back out there sometime soon! Instead of exploring more of Wales on Sunday, we headed back into England to check out Bath, another city that’s been on our bucket list.

I’d been waiting to visit Bath till one of our highly anticipated hotels would open in the town. However, construction for the historic building was taking longer than anticipated, so we decided it was now or never. The best part of visiting Bath was we got to see our good family friends – The Francis family! I’ve known Peter and Mari since I was a little girl visiting my grandma in Keyhaven. They now live in Bath and have two adorable boys. We had a delicious Sunday roast lunch at this beautiful pub, The Huntsman. Afterwards, they showed us around town. We fell in love with the beautiful architecture and charming streets of Bath and could have spent a whole weekend enjoying the town.

After a wonderful afternoon, we made our way back to London, full of delicious food from the weekend and great memories!