..is no one going to mention that England one?! I suspect there may have been a few locals in red shirts drowning their sorrows in Cardiff last night.
As someone who lived in Wales for 15 years it never ceased to amazed me how patriotic and passionate the Welsh are about their rugby. If you walked down the Main Street in Cardiff on international day it was often just a sea of red jerseys.
This is what I like about the location of the Millennium Stadium, right in the city centre so the atmosphere builds before the game. Cardiff City Centre on match day is a great place to be even if your not attending the match just for the atmosphere.
Twickenham on the other hand has no such city centre around so other than a couple of local pubs, the crowd go to the game and back out again straight after.
When I go to Millennium Stadium I make a day of it and spend the whole day in Cardiff. When I go to Twickenham I arrive in the area an hour before kick off and leave pretty much at the final whistle.
I've been known to go to watch Wales rather than England just because of the Cardiff atmosphere on match days.
"Couple of local pubs?" which Twickenham have you been going to? There's at least 8 between the station and the end of the High St including the huge Weatherspoons, then there's Richmond just down the road, Whitton, and it's v easy to get into London.........all this dispersal makes it a much nicer place to have a beer than central Cardiff, which although pleasant enough is v small and what pubs there are (especially since the late lamented Vulcan!) are absolutely rammed.....coupled with the early last trains back to England (even on a normal Saturday!) give me Twickenham any time!
......but Stade de France, now there's a stadium - excellent public transport for one thing, puts the
UK▸ to shame, back into central Paris in a matter of minutes!
At twickenham, generally park on site or next to the stoop, for somebody who doesn't know the area I discovered two pubs and a Tesco.
Cardiff no parking at the stadium, so naturally end up parking somewhere that involves walking through the city centre.
As an Englishman it ashames me to say the cardiff match day experience is ten times that of twickenham.
