We had a lovely time in Cardiff last weekend. It was particularly good to meet up with old university friends whom we’d not seen for nearly 10 years.

We stayed in the renovated or newly built bay area which seemed to be tastefully done with plenty of restaurants and bars to satisfy all tastes. The new Wales Millennium Centre is especially spectacular. The open space outside it would make an excellent outdoor ice rink in winter and “beach” in summer.

We splashed out and ate at Tides Grill at the St. Davids Hotel. It was very nice sat, as we were, overlooking the bay itself. As is often the case I had meat and Louise chose fish making wine a bit of problem so we opted for a half-bottle of red for me and half-bottle of white for Louise! A shame really as it didn’t give us much choice to try something unusual as their wine list is quite extensive.

Whilst Tides Grill was very nice, Woods Brasserie was fab. We ate at the “pre-Opera” sitting that has a limited but still good menu. I’d definitely want to go back to choose from the full menu.

The concert we went to was Four Seasons by Candlelight at St. David’s Hall, given by the Mozart Festival Orchestra. I was looking forward to this as it also featured quite a lot of trumpet literature including one of my favourites, Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets. To top it off the main trumpet soloist was none other than Crispian Steele-Perkins the best proponent of the natural trumpet (though he didn’t play any on the night), and the chap who recorded the theme tune to the Antiques Roadshow. I was able to have a little chat to him during the interval and he was gracious enough to sign a copy of his CD for me.

Amongst all this I also managed to fit in a trumpet lesson with Roddy Lewis to reinforce some of the things he’d instructed me in before, and Louise managed to spend her birthday money.

All in all we had a great time and it sounded like the kids had had a great time with their Nanny and Granddad, though I suspect the latter were glad to get back home:)