JURASSIC THRILLS AND MORE AWAIT IN SURPRISING CITY
THE booming roar woke me in an instant and the thumping footsteps made the room shudder.
If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn I was being roused by a giant dinosaur – and that’s exactly what I was supposed to think.
I was inside National Museum Cardiff with my 10-year-old son Freddie after our first dinosaur sleepover. It was like having a kip in Jurassic Park.
Before sleeping, we enjoyed a fun torch-light tour through
4,600million years of history in the museum’s Evolution of Wales gallery with fossil expert Dr Caroline Buttler.
She pointed out gems like a frighteningly large sea scorpion from when Wales was hot, humid and in the southern hemisphere.
Caroline asked what the oldest thing we’d ever touched was before letting us feel a
3,300m-year-old rock, Britain’s oldest, and a
4.5billion-year-old meteorite found in Africa. A life-size woolly mammoth and baby, a massive woolly rhino and a hippo that used to live on The Gower all loomed out of the darkness under our flashlights, as well as real dinosaur footprints.
During the evening we “met” more prehistoric creatures in a lively show, tucked into a picnic and hot chocolate and enjoyed a film in the museum cinema – Ben Stiller’s Night At The Museum, obviously. We slept in the large main hall – camping mats were provided but you brought your own sleeping bag – and it easily accommodated all 145 of us. By midnight, when the lights went out, everyone was tired enough to drop off without worrying that the exhibits might be coming to life…until our wake-up roar the next morning reminded us where we were.
There is heaps more to discover in cool Cardiff. Sports-mad Freddie was keen to tour the Principality Stadium – the home of Welsh rugby and an iconic sight right in the city. With a capacity of 74,500 it’s Britain’s fourth largest venue (adult £12.50, child £9; see principalitystadium.wales). Freddie enjoyed playing a manager in the Press room, walking down the players’ tunnel towards the pitch and holding up a cup, inset left, given to New Zealand when they beat Wales in a friendly.
We then headed a mile out of the city to Heaney’s, a restaurant by TV chef Tommy Heaney (heaneyscardiff.co.uk). The food was excellent but the beetroot-cured salmon with velvety homemade horseradish and the 60-day dry-aged beef in a miso-inspired jus stood out. Save room for a pud!
Our dino sleepover was great fun but we were happy to spend our next night in more traditional surroundings – a fourth-floor suite at the classy Park Plaza hotel, which proved spacious and luxurious and offered views over the elegant City Hall.
A winning touch at the hearty breakfast buffet was the novel pancake-making machine, while evenings in the Laguna restaurant offered British classics with a local twist such as Welsh beef carpaccio and sea bass with crisp calamari and squid-ink mayo.
Wales’ most popular heritage attraction, St Fagans National Museum of History, is a 25-minute bus ride away and well worth a visit (museum.wales/stfagans, free).
The open-air and indoor venue celebrates Wales from ancient times through to the present and takes you on a novel walk through history. Freddie liked the dressing-up clothes from different eras and met a lifesized reconstruction of a Neanderthal boy of eight, whose teeth are displayed in the collection. At 230,000 years old they’re the museum’s oldest exhibit and the only Neanderthal teeth found on mainland UK. It was certainly an amazing find for us to chew over.