Cardiff Bay - Bae Caerdydd

Fiona, our Welsh coordinator, organised a most interesting guided tour through totally renewed Cardiff Bay.

Cardiff Bay has been transformed from a grimy coal exporting sea port to an area of exclusive houses and chic eateries and pubs. The former Tiger Bay is now trendy bay. Cardiff, the capital of Wales, certainly has something to offer most people. Every visitor to the city should make a beeline for the gentrified Cardiff Bay, or Tiger Bay as it is still locally known. This part of the city has been developed into a commercial and entertainment centre: an area of modern buildings, fashionable and expensive housing, of trendy restaurants and watering holes all sensitively incorporated into the existing Victorian buildings. The recently opened Wales Millennium Centre and the Welsh Government Assembly are two futuristic buildings not to be missed. Indeed the Millennium Centre is now home to the renowned Welsh National Opera.

Tiger Bay’s Proud History

Cardiff Bay should be on the list of anyone visiting this city. Looking over the breeze rippled water with the restored remnants of railway headings emerging from the waters of the bay it is difficult to imagine that only 60 years ago Cardiff was the worlds’ greatest coal exporting seaport. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries tall ships were so tightly moored at the docksides it was possible for a stevedore to walk from one part of the dock to another, without stepping on dry land

Cardiff BAY, text

It all started at the visitors’ centre with a film.

visitors’ centre

Next the guide took us to the several buildings in the area:

the Welsh Millennium Centre

Millennium Centre

"In these stones horizons sing"

For more about the inscriptions, click HERE

the Norwegian Church

Norwegian Church

Built in 1868 as a place of worship for the large number of Norwegian sailors and seamen who sailed into Cardiff, the original church was located a mile from its current position.

guide, on the left, and part of the group

In 1987, the building was dismantled and then moved, piece by piece, to its new location where it now houses a coffee shop and art gallery

Norwegian Church

seen from the other side of the Bay

The Church is also noted for being the place where the famous children’s author, Roald Dahl, was christened in 1916.

the Victorian Pierhead Building

Pierhead Building, text

coat of arms of

Cardiff Railway Company

merchant Seafarers’ War Memorial

"Lost at sea"

Pierhead seen from inside the

SENEDD, National Assembly for Wales

the Senedd, National Assembly for Wales

SENEDD, National Assembly for Wales

SENEDD, National Assembly, text

SENEDD, inside

SENEDD, national Assembly, text

On our way we met a lot of sculptures and a

lightship

After lunch at Terra Nova, the name of Captain Scott’s Antartic ship,

Terra Nova restaurant

lunch at Terra Nova

= Captain Scott’s Antartic ship

a train took us from Mermaid Quay to the Barrage.

Finally a boattrip on the River Taff, brought us back near the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff’s city centre.