As I said in my last post, Mick and I wanted to see some other sites in Cardiff. So, we caught Bus 13,  from a stop about 200m from our front door, to Cardiff Bay.

Cardiff has several different bus services, the most common is Cardiff Bus – recognisable by their orange and green colouring with a dragon logo, and the use of numerals only to classify the routes. Other bus companies add letters like X1, or 32A etc, and the buses are not uniform in colour or shape. This is important, because if you get on a Cardiff Bus and buy a “Day to Go” ticket for £4 – you can get on and off as many of the Cardiff Buses as you like (on that day), but the ticket does not work on the other buses, and vice versa.

OK, so Mick and I wanted to get to The Bay. The bus ride took about 40 minutes, although it is less than 6Km away; this included a scheduled nine minute wait at one stop.

This photo was taken around 10.00am, but it looked like it was taken at sunrise. The buildings and the shopping malls in this area are vastly different to central Cardiff.

Before the completion of the Cardiff Bay Barrage in 1999, Cardiff Bay was tidal, with extensive expanses of mud flats exposed at low tide. Construction of the barrage, one of the largest engineering projects in Europe, has turned Cardiff Bay into a 500-acre (2.0 km2) freshwater lake with 8 miles (13 km) of waterfront.

If anyone reading this post has been to Bayside in Cardiff before 1999, the area would be unrecognisable. It was quite beautiful.

This is reportedly Europe’s largest waterfront development. In the left of this photo is a large complex called Mermaid Quay – a shopping mall as well as lots of cafes, bars and restaurants.

Mick and I were not really interested in the shops and shopping, but we did enjoy a coffee (coffi) and a piece of toast while we waited for the bus to take us back towards our house sit.

A short distance from our cafe, we discovered the Millennium Centre – which is an impressive looking arts centre, that was opened in 2004.

The first photo is a pan shot, hoping to show the scale of the building. I also took an ordinary shot of the tall cylinder, which is in fact a water feature. It was quite mesmerising, as well as being massive.

There was not a lot more to do here at the time of our visit, so we caught the next bus and hopped off at Canton to explore some of the quirky shops in that part of Cardiff, before catching another bus to take us home in time for our lunch, and time to feed and walk Mitzi.

We have plans to maximise the all-day ticket later in the day. Mick is keen to visit a few of the pubs he spotted in Canton, and using the buses will make it all the more achievable.