As students, we all have to indulge our friends’ yearnings for those tacky, boring or awfully cringe things to do.But the truth is, no matter how much hate you profess for wherever you get dragged to by your mates, you will always leave wanting more. Here are places we can’t help but love in Cardiff.
Retro
This club claims to be ‘home of the 90s vibe’. The music is reminiscent of a school disco, and the club itself is barely bigger than one of your old classrooms, not to mention the mile-long queue for the bar. Yet strangely, it all has somewhat of allure, and you find yourself there pretty much every Wednesday, dancing in close quarters with the same guy from last week. Every now and then you even catch a glimpse of the VIP room when you have to show some poor misguided mate to the cloakroom, but you would never pay to go in, because you’re a student and let face it, a bit of a cheapskate.
Glam
No matter how hard you resist, you always seem to find yourself falling into this nightclub on a Monday night. Glam in itself is quite inoffensive, however, the night always seems to end in the dreaded cheese room. The cheese-fest that is Glam Mondays has the same school disco vibe as Retro but comes with a rather interesting smell. It’s possible the manager took the term cheese too literally and started to hide nine-year-old Camembert in the ceiling, it would definitely not surprise me. But when The Ketchup Song starts to play there is no smell in the world that could keep us from the dance floor.
Stag Coffee
Moving on from the tacky to the downright pretentious, we have stag coffee. The kitsch decor coupled with cheesy jokes scrawled on the chalkboards outside just scream hipster try-hard. The food is also a bit pricey for a student budget, but I am not ashamed to admit that I would eat there every single day if I could. There is a pile of blankets and hot water bottles by the door for you to grab if you’re feeling the chill. And your gingerbread latte comes with a tiny gingerbread man. In my opinion, these should come with every drink order. I want a tiny cookie that corresponds to every drink I order and I want it now.
Cafe 37
By all outward appearances Cafe 37 seems to be a standard greasy spoon, small and cheap, with food fried so long that one type of meat is practically indistinguishable from another. But you should never judge a book by its cover, as the food there is perfect for curing the post essay blues. Yes, it comes cheap, but it is a far cry from the standard greasy spoon cuisine, and the selection of fresh juices and smoothies are to die for.
Cardiff University Students’ Union Y Plas
This is the venue we all love to hate. Fancy a Wednesday night where you have to battle through a group of rugby lads to make your way back to your friends? I’m so down for that. The security deciding breathalysers are a good and comical safety measure. The bar also features a DJ who seems to have just wandered in from a club in Ibiza, with his constant attempts to hype the crowd by periodically yelling ‘Cardiff University’. Throw it all at me, I am so ready. Game on Y Plas, game on.
