Conwy and Llandudno

Yesterday we went on a speedboat to see Puffin Island. There's about 10 seats which you straddle like riding a horse and hold the back of the seat in front of you. The driver asked if we really wanted to go because the sea was choppy. There was an alternative but everyone chose Puffin Island. It was cold and the sea was rough, partly because of bigger boats in the water.  Puffins usually arrive at the island in April but came in March this year. We saw some on the island, in the sea,  and flying above us but they were difficult to spot and see clearly but it was a fun boat ride.

 Except for time on the boat, it was another hot day. The high temperature is around 61 but there's been no cloudy days so it feels much hotter. We spent a lot of time sitting around the quay looking at the boats and people and dog watching. Many of the boats allow dogs. There's a lot of bars, people singing, various types of boat trips you can take. 

We also went to Plas Mawr which is supposed to be the best preserved Elizabethan house in the UK. It was bought by a wealthy merchant in 1546.  The building has been on constant use as a school, art gallery, court,  and wedding venue. It had some renovations before becoming  tourist attraction but most of the building remains as it was when the merchant's family lived there. Of course, there were a number of spiral staircase in the house. We went up the stairs to see the various rooms until the last staircase led to a ladder. We'll never know what was in that room. When we bought tickets, we were asked whether we wanted a map in English or Welsh. The man in front of us chose Welsh and had a conversation with the young woman working there. I've been wondering how much of the population speak Welsh and get conflicting information from Google. When we left, there was a different young woman working so I asked her. She said in the whole country, the total is less than 30% but farther in the North, especially in the countryside and small towns, the percentage is much higher and Welsh is the first language of many Northerners. She doesn't speak Welsh. Everything in Wales that has words appears in both English and Welsh. 

Today we took a hop on bus to Llundudno which is a popular seaside town on a bay with a promenade with a ferris wheel, other rides, and food you associate with amusement areas, like hot dogs, cotton candy, etc.  One of the claims to fame of this town is that it's where Lewis Carroll met a little girl named Alice who inspired his books. What is true is that little Alice's family had a vacation home there and Carroll knew the family. Whether he spent a lot of time in the town is debatable. There's a large white rabbit statue and an Alice in Wonderland trail with various statues of characters from the books.

There is a hotel called St. George which opened in 1854. Its claim to fame is that 7 British prime ministers have stayed there, including Winston Churchill,  many royals and dignitaries from other countries. And of course, little Alice and her family stayed there one summer. The hotel installed the first lift in all of the UK. All the Victorian buildings on that street are stunning. 

 

We saw interesting landscapes on the bus but the main reason we went to the town was to take the Great Orme Tranway which is a funicular opened in 1902. It runs on public streets. It climbs a mile to the Great Orme summit. At the halfway point, everyone gets off the tram and onto another one or you can walk for a few minutes to visit the Great Orme mines which mined copper ore in the past but hasnt been in use since the late 1800s. It might have been interesting but you have to walk down several stories and there's no elevator back up. It also has dark and narrow passages. 

The view from the summit is amazing. There's a building that is now a restaurant and museum  that was originally used as a golf club house, telegram office and as a RAF radar station in WII.  The golf course was transferred into potato fields during WWII.  There's now a miniature golf course was and play area on the site. From the summit you can see Puffin Island and Snowdonia National Park. 

The goat statue commemorates the Kashmir goats given to Britain in the 19th century. The goats are descendants of the original herd but the population has to be kept at under 200.

The summit is 679 feet high.