Princes Mall and St James Centre

Take the time to look around the shopping centres of Princes Mall and the St James Centre in Edinburgh to find more variety of stores with new trends in clothes and footwear and gifts for friends and family back home. The St James Centre is home to the department store John Lewis, where you can spend hours browsing, while Princes Mall also has a fantastic food court where you can grab a bite to eat or enjoy a quick coffee.

Golf courses

Edinburgh is a great city for playing golf in and within a short distance you will find some of Scotland’s most famous and historic golf courses.

Edinburgh has a splendid array of very accessible golf courses, some of which offer incredible views of the city. You could be teeing off in sight of Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat. Scotland’s capital might not be synonymous with golf, but the quality of courses available is excellent.

You don’t have to venture far from Edinburgh either to play some of the most famous and historic courses in the game. East Lothian has an astonishing amount of legendary golfing venues. There is Muirfield, where the Open has been staged 15 times, and will again in 2013. Musselburgh is another venerable golf club while Gullane has no less than three classic links courses.

With the luxurious East and West courses at Dalmahoy just west of Edinburgh, and so much more in an area that has such a rich golfing heritage, golfers are simply spoilt for choice.

You can find details of all of the golf courses in Edinburgh and the Lothians and decide which ones you want to play during your break.

CARDIFF

Cardiff (Welsh, Caerdydd) is the capital of Wales and the tenth largest city in the United Kingdom and is on the south coast of the country. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for Wales. The unitary authority area's mid 2011 population was estimated to be 346,100, while the population of the Larger Urban Zone was estimated at 861,400 in 2009.

Cardiff is on the south coast of the south Wales plain, with a shoreline on the Bristol Channel. Cardiff is quite a flat city, a characteristic that helped it become one of the world's leading ports for the transport of coal from the rugged south Wales Valleys. Though it had a reputation of being an industrial city, Cardiff has changed dramatically in recent decades. It is now a lively and modern capital city, gaining popularity with tourists interested in its history and Welsh culture. It is quickly becoming one of the United Kingdom's tourism hot spots. Summer is by far the best time to visit as the city hosts large festivals with al fresco dining and drinking becoming ever more popular due to large areas of pedestrianisation. The city centre has seen huge development over the last decade and is now considered to be one of the top ten shopping destinations in the United Kingdom. Cardiff is a very green city, having the most green space per person in the UK, and this is complimented by Bute Park which sits in the heart of the city.

Cardiff is a significant tourist centre and the most popular visitor destination in Wales with 18.3 million visitors in 2010. In 2011, Cardiff was ranked sixth in the world in National Geographic's alternative tourist destinations.

It has a reputation as a city of castles, having 5 different castles within its surroundings. The city's core population stands at roughly 341,000, with 861,000 living in the larger urban area

History

Cardiff's history follows its castle which has been occupied for over 2,000 years when the Romans created a fort on the river Taff (where the name may have come from 'Caer' = fort, on the 'Taff'); the fort's original walls can still be seen highlighted around the base of Cardiff Castle's walls. In Medieval times the castle grew, and a small town spread from its south gate, the medieval street pattern can still be seen around High Street. In the 15th century the town was destroyed by the last great Welsh Prince Owain Glyndwr. Successive owners fortified the castle and the town timidly grew, until the industrial revolution when the 2nd Marquess of Bute built the Glamorganshire canal to transport coal from the Welsh valleys through Cardiff's docks. Combined with the later arrival of the railways, Cardiff's population exploded and the docks grew to become the largest coal exporting port in the world. At it's peak, the price of the world's coal was determined at Cardiff's Coal Exchange and the first ever £1,000,000 cheque was written here in 1901 (equivalent to £77,837,000 today). Cardiff was the 3rd largest port of the British Empire resulting in Edward VII granting Cardiff city status in 1905. With the rise of the city's fortunes the Marquis of Bute transformed Cardiff castle into a fairytale gothic palace, donating land to build the truly impressive civic centre which contains the City Hall, National Museum, university and government buildings, all built in elaborate neo-classical Baroque styles out of expensive white Portland stone. Cardiff was lucky not to have its city center heavily bombed like other industrial cities during WWII, and was spared the worst excesses of the post war rebuilding, so a stroll around throws up many contrasts in eras and designs. It may surprise people that Wales (Cymru) did not have a de jure capital until 1955, when Cardiff was chosen as the outstanding candidate as largest city. However, with the post-War decline of coal, the city's docks became increasingly abandoned, and in the 90's the city’s transformation began with the building of a barrage to stop the worlds second largest tidal range from revealing dirty mud flats, and creating what is today Europe's largest waterfront regeneration project. The Bay today is a mixture of apartments, sport, leisure and culture and its success has also seen a rejuvination of the city centre, where large scale pedestrianisation and the recent massive St David's redevelopment have created a vibrant city, combining the best of the old, sitting close to modern architecture and amenities. As for the Castle, it was handed over to the people of Cardiff, and is now a major tourist, corporate and cultural attraction, an indication of where the city's future lies.

Profile

Cardiff has a strong sporting and cultural presence given that it is the capital city, and therefore plays host to most Welsh sporting events, especially since the opening of the Millennium Stadium in the city center. In fact one of the city's charms is when it plays host to matches, the city centre atmosphere can be extraordinary, being swelled by 75,000 attendees and thousands of revellers.

In the past it was quite a gritty city with the port and industry playing a huge role, Cardiff's ports were once amongst the most important in the world. Notable milestones were when Cardiff Bay (sometimes called Tiger Bay) was the first area of modern Britain to be thought of as a multicultural area given the huge part immigrants played in the city's ports, and the world's first 'million pound' deal was also signed at the Bay's own Coal Exchange building.

In the past few decades however, the city has moved away from its industrial past and has been transformed by developments such as Cardiff Bay, which now hosts famous and striking landmarks such as the National Assembly for Wales and the spectacular Wales Millennium Centre. Massive investments have also been made throughout other parts of the city, such as the opening of the Millennium Stadium and massive Saint David's shopping centre.

Sporting venues in the city include the Millennium Stadium (the national stadium for the Wales national rugby union team and the Wales national football team), SWALEC Stadium (the home of Glamorgan County Cricket Club), Cardiff City Stadium (the home of Cardiff City football team), Cardiff International Sports Stadium (the home of Cardiff Amateur Athletic Club) and Cardiff Arms Park (the home of Cardiff Blues and Cardiff RFC rugby union teams). The city is also HQ of the Wales Rally GB and was awarded with the European City of Sport in 2009 due to its role in hosting major international sporting events. It has been announced that Cardiff will once again be the European City of Sport in 2014. The Millennium Stadium hosted 11 football matches as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics, including the games' opening event and the men's bronze medal match.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 632