Cardiff feels the heat!

This summer, Cardiff is adding another attraction to bring sun-seekers to the city. With Cardiff Festival offering a huge number of events in the South Wales sunshine, and the city's beautiful parks providing space to relax and sunbathe, Cardiff nearly has it all. All that is missing is a tropical feeling, sandy beach.

So that's exactly what Cardiff Festival aims to bring.

Over the summer months, 300 tonnes of sand will be utilised to create Cardiff's Urban Beach - an artificial beach attraction on the vast Roald Dahl Plass outside the magnificent Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay.

The feature will run from July 27th to September 1st, offering a free day out in the sun to residents and visitors to the Welsh capital. The family friendly beach will see a shallow water play area and sand pit for younger children, deck chairs beneath giant parasols and space for volleyball and beach football for some sporty fun in the sunshine.

Sponsored by First Choice and Cardiff Airport, the beach will be erected in Cardiff Bay's Roald Dahl Plass, a space utilised for large events such as this, which will also host the Welsh Food and Drink Festival two weeks before the urban beach opens. Cardiff will join cities such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen to provide visitors with an urban beach where they can soak up the sun.

Entertainment at the urban beach will include live music and dance, with traditional seaside rides offering more fun. Everything will be catered for in Cardiff's beautiful bay area, with Mermaid Quay and the Wales Millennium Centre already providing first class amenities. Cardiff Festival will see more than 20 other events around the city during summer.

If you're planning a visit to the Welsh capital, don't forget to download our Trippa Cardiff app. It's the most downloaded travel guide app for the city and we're proud that it's packed with all the information you'll need to get the most out of your trip. An urban beach is just the newest feature this wonderful city has to offer!

Image courtesy of Cardiff Festival.

Palma de Mallorca

For the classier traveler, the island of Mallorca still has plenty to offer. The island's capital, Palma, is a stylish little city packed with history with a gloriously relaxed atmosphere and one of our favourite Trippa destinations.

Just north of the infamous Magaluf resort, the fabulously compact city is a grown-up resort up the road from the excess of one of Britain's favourite holiday destinations. Popular among young people seeking sun, sea and a slightly seedy weekend, seems like a world away from the beauty and luxury of Palma.

If you choose to stay in the island's capital (and you should), you'll have so much more on your doorstep. Away from the strip of late night bars and loud holidaymakers, you can enjoy yourself in one of the Balearic Islands' oldest cities.

Palma was founded by the Romans, and later occupied by Muslim Moorish settlers in the Byzantine period. The Muslim conquest of the island and the city formed a great deal of the culture that is still visible today, but it acquired a distinctive multicultural feel after being reconquered by Christians in the 11th century. In the modern day, the city is still multicultural, and visitors will be happy to know that a reconquest has not occurred for hundreds of years.

Since the 1950's, Palma has been a popular tourist destination, and has grown in size and reputation. It attracts more than 20million people every year, with a rich mix of history and everyday pleasures offering an enjoyable and varied stay.

The city's nightlife is wonderful, with awesome views of the dramatic, mountainous landscape and the calm waters of the Mediterranean.

An astonishing combination of the old and new, with the contrasts of the old buildings and the super modern yachts in Palma's beautiful harbour, provides a wonderfully complex environment to see, but one that is relaxed, calm and inviting.

Take a stroll through the narrow streets and find one of the city's various hidden gems, whether it is a beautiful old building, a stylish bar or a gorgeous restaurant with even better food.

If you're only staying for a weekend or a couple of days, and don't want to spend the time finding these gems by accident, Trippa Palma lists them all! We've gone everywhere worth going to in Palma, and we've listed them all in a handy little app to make sure your stay is as luxurious as possible.

Download the app now to make sure your stay in Palma is as awesome as it can be.

London's Iconic Underground

Here at Trippa, we love London. London is our capital city. At one point it was the capital city of the world, at the centre of the world's largest empire. It is now a thriving, modern metropolis - a financial centre for the entire globe and a destination for millions of tourists each year. Visitors come from all around the world, and nearly every single one of them will already be familiar with the city - an abstract version of it anyway.

The London Underground Map is one probably the most iconic representation of London, and appears on mugs, t-shirts, and posters from Hawaii to Honk Kong.

The map is a design classic, and has won praise from artists, academics and graphic designers. It is an instantly recognisable representation of Britain's capital, a cultural icon and symbol of the colourful and multifaceted city which it serves.

However, the map isn't geographically accurate. It simplifies and morphs the city into a presentable, cool design. It displays the lines and stations in relation to each other, but the distances between them are not to scale. Have a look at a geographical map of the Tube! That isn't the London we all familiarise ourselves with before we arrive in the Big City!

The fact is that London is enormous. The abstract map makes us feel that the city is a little more ordered, compact and easy to handle. But once you step outside of your first Tube station, emerging for the first time into one of the world's most complex urban environments, you start to understand the huge sprawl that lies before you and spreads for miles in every direction.

London's Tube map gives you the confidence to go and explore without panicking at the enormity of such a task. And there really is a Tube station nearby at all times. In fact, some stations are nearly right next to each other, even on the same line. Only 260 metres separates Leicester Square and Covent Garden - a mere 20 seconds on the tube (which would cost £4.50) - but the time it takes you to walk down through the station, wait for the next train, travel and then walk up through the next stop is nearly double how long it would take to walk!

One of the world's most convenient and well-known transport system, the London Underground does effectively make the city smaller. You can get anywhere you want on the Tube, but if you saw the geographical map, you'd run scared from the complicated network of tunnels and tracks. Part of the reason the iconic map of the system is so famous is because it makes the capital seem manageable. You get all the excitement of the metropolis packaged neatly and efficiently, and it allows you to enjoy your time in the Capital of the World.

If you're still a little scared that it will all be too much for you, we're developing Trippa London to help you find your way around. We love London, and we want you to love it too. So we've been everywhere there is to go and we've selected the very best, and we've suggested them in the handy little app that will ensure you have the most enjoyable, relaxed and stylish stay in the capital of the United Kingdom. If the Tube still seems daunting, Trippa London will help you find your way around. We're still making sure it's as helpful as it can be, so keep a look out for it's release!

Our other city guide apps help you find your way around some of Europe's most amazing cities, so check out our destinations to make your holiday a little more luxurious!

Photo Credit: davidhc