Cardiff

Exit the castle south gate, cross Castle Street, and walk five minutes down Westgate Street — the Principality Stadium rises above the Victorian rooftops like a steel spaceship docked in the city centre. Walk the full west flank along the Millennium Walkway beside the river Taff to see the retractable roof's gantry mechanism and the only angle that captures all 74,500 seats in one shot. This is Welsh rugby's cathedral; on a non-match day the riverside path is yours alone.

Tip: The river Taff west bank is the single public vantage that fits the full stadium in one frame — the east side has buildings in the way. Avoid weekends from February to March (Six Nations) unless you have a ticket: the entire city centre closes to traffic and queues choke every street within 500 m. Check fixtures at principalitystadium.wales before you travel.

From the stadium's east flank, walk three minutes through Quay Street into the Victorian arcade district — the St Mary Street entrance to Cardiff Central Market is the cast-iron arch on your left. Head straight upstairs to the wrought-iron gallery for the panoramic photograph of the 1891 hall, then back down for lunch: Bakestones for Welsh cakes straight off the griddle (90p each), Ashton's traditional faggot-and-peas plate (£6), or NSP for fish and chips (£8). This is what Cardiff actually eats — fast, regional, and a fraction of the price of the chains on The Hayes.

Tip: Open 08:00–17:30 Monday to Saturday, closed Sundays — do not arrive on a Sunday and expect anything. Bakestones (ground floor, near the St Mary Street entrance) takes cash only and the queue moves fast; eat the Welsh cakes on the gallery upstairs for the view. Skip Costa, Starbucks, and the Hayes café row outside — they're slower, double the price, and have nothing local.

Exit the market onto Hayes Place, cross to Lloyd George Avenue, and walk the regenerated 1.8 km boulevard south to Cardiff Bay — 25 minutes flat, art installations along the way, and the bronze facade of the Millennium Centre gradually filling the horizon. Read the giant Welsh-and-English inscription cut through the copper — 'Creating Truth Like Glass From Inspiration's Furnace / In These Stones Horizons Sing' — best photographed from the centre of Roald Dahl Plass at 14:30 when the sun lights the patina. Walk through the foyer (free entry) for the slate columns and the Glanfa Stage.

Tip: If energy is low after the morning, the Baycar bus 6 runs every 10 minutes from Westgate Street to Cardiff Bay for £2.20 — journey 8 minutes versus 25 walking. The Millennium Centre foyer is free and most tourists assume it's ticketed; the slate columns are quarried from Welsh slate fields you'd otherwise need to drive to Snowdonia to see. The bronze letters are the photograph — frame them with the dome of the Pierhead Building in the background.

Walk south from Roald Dahl Plass for five minutes — the red-brick Pierhead Building (1897, Welsh-Gothic, terracotta clock) is on your right, the Senedd parliament's glass-and-slate roof beside it. Continue around the Inner Harbour curve to the Norwegian Church Arts Centre, a small white wooden chapel where Roald Dahl was baptised in 1916. From there, walk 1.2 km east along the boardwalk to the Cardiff Bay Barrage — the 1990s lock system that turned brown tidal mudflats into the freshwater bay you've been circling — and out to the lighthouse at the far end for views across to Penarth and the Bristol Channel beyond.

Tip: The Norwegian Church serves the best flat white in the Bay (£3.20) and is a working arts centre, not a paid attraction — most visitors stop at the Millennium Centre and turn back, missing it entirely. Best photograph: from the south-east boardwalk with the white timber reflected in the still bay water, around 17:00 in summer. The Pierhead Building is free to enter and houses a small museum of Welsh political history — 20 minutes is enough.

From the Barrage lighthouse, walk 25 minutes back along the boardwalk to Mermaid Quay — Bosphorus is the wooden pavilion on stilts jutting out over the bay water, the only restaurant in Cardiff actually built on the harbour. Reserve a deck table facing west: in summer the sun drops behind the Barrage at 20:30 and the bay turns molten gold beneath your plate. Order the mixed mezze (£14, easily shares between two) and the Iskender kebab (£18) — thin-sliced lamb on toasted bread with yogurt and tomato butter, the dish the restaurant is known for across South Wales.

Tip: Book a west-facing deck table online (bosphorus.co.uk) at least 24 hours ahead — locals fight for them in summer. Pitfall warning: the chain restaurants along the inner Mermaid Quay strip (Wahaca, Bills, Cosy Club, Las Iguanas) are £25-per-head tourist traps with mediocre pub food and no view of the water; the staff push you towards them as you arrive at the Bay. Bosphorus is the only place on the quay genuinely over the water, and the food is twice as good for the same money.

Exit the castle through the east gate onto Boulevard de Nantes — Cathays Park unfolds before you, a Beaux-Arts civic square of pale Portland stone, with the museum's columned portico straight ahead, an 8-minute walk through formal gardens. Go directly up the central staircase to the first-floor Impressionist galleries: the Davies sisters bequeathed Wales a Monet water-lilies canvas, three Cézannes and a Van Gogh that would draw queues in Paris but here have entire rooms to themselves. The high north-facing windows pour soft midday light straight onto the canvases — the single best hour to see them is the one you've just walked into.

Tip: Closed Mondays. Free entry but drop £5 in the donation box — this collection is genuinely world-class and locally funded. Skip the dinosaur gallery on the ground floor; it's mediocre and eats time you should be spending with the Welsh portraits by Gwen John on Floor 1.

Retrace your route south down Boulevard de Nantes, cross at the castle wall and duck through the cast-iron entrance of Castle Arcade opposite the keep — 10 minutes total, with the Edwardian glass roof of the arcade opening above you as you enter. Order the Glamorgan sausages (£12.50 — leek, Caerphilly cheese and breadcrumbs, the Welsh meatless classic) and a bowl of cawl (£9.50 — slow-cooked lamb and leek stew that ends every Welsh winter). Ask for the small upper gallery — you eat looking down through the wrought-iron tracery onto shoppers crossing the arcade below, the most photographable Cardiff lunch view there is.

Tip: Budget £20-28 per person. No reservations — arrive by 13:30 to beat the Cathedral Road professionals, otherwise the upper gallery is gone. If both galleries are full, the cheese shop downstairs sells the same cawl in a takeaway pot; eat it on the bench outside the castle.

Cut south through Castle Arcade onto High Street, then west along Quay Street and Westgate Street — the stadium's silver retractable roof looms over the River Taff in under 8 minutes. Pause on the Millennium Footbridge for the classic Cardiff postcard angle. Wales's cathedral of rugby drops you onto the pitch where the Six Nations is decided every February: through the home dressing room (red leather, motivational mosaics), the deliberately bleak away room, the players' tunnel, and out onto the turf itself, where even non-fans stop breathing for a moment when they look up at 74,000 empty seats curving towards the sky.

Tip: Book online — walk-up is £18, online £15, and the 15:30 slot has the late-afternoon sun pouring through the open roof, which makes for far better photos than the morning tour. Tours don't run on event days; check the fixture list before booking weekends in February-March (Six Nations) or August (concerts).

Walk back across the Millennium Footbridge into Working Street — Royal Arcade, the city's oldest (1858), is the entrance two doors down, 5 minutes from the stadium. Cardiff has more covered Victorian arcades per square mile than anywhere else in Britain, and the four-arcade loop (Royal → Morgan → High Street → Castle) is a 45-minute walk through independent bookshops, vinyl crates and the wonderful Spillers in Morgan Arcade — the world's oldest record shop, trading continuously since 1894. The late-afternoon light angling sideways through the curved glass roofs is the photograph every visitor misses because they look at shop windows instead of up.

Tip: Start at Spillers in Morgan Arcade — they close at 17:30 sharp and the staff are the unofficial historians of Welsh music. Penylan Pantry in Royal Arcade does a take-away Welsh cheeseboard if you're peckish before dinner.

Exit Castle Arcade onto High Street, walk south past the castle wall and turn west onto Quay Street — Asador 44 is the warmly-lit corner restaurant on the right, 6 minutes from the arcade. Cardiff's serious dinner reservation: a Basque asador where suckling pig (£42 for two to share) is roasted in a wood-fired oven imported plank-by-plank from Pamplona. Order the pluma ibérica (£28, the secret cut of acorn-fed Iberico pork) with smoked piquillo peppers and a glass of Rioja Reserva — the same family runs Bar 44 next door, which is where Cardiff's chefs eat on their nights off.

Tip: Budget £50-70 per person with wine. Reserve 7-10 days ahead for Friday-Saturday; weeknights you can often walk in at 19:30. Ask for a table in the front room near the wood-fire — the rear dining room lacks the drama. Pitfall warning: avoid the chain restaurants fanning out along Mill Lane and the lower end of St Mary Street — those blocks are built for stag parties not eaters, and you'll pay London prices for microwaved food.