Woke up at 7:30 this morning, showered, packed and went down to breakfast. As soon as we walked into the dining room we knew something was amiss. Our waitress from the evening before came over to seat us looking very harried. She said the chef hadn’t shown up this morning so all of the non-cooking staff were helping out even the maintenance man, trying to make a bad situation better. We felt pretty bad for our waitress as she had worked the night before until 10:30p and then come in at 7:00a to this mayhem.

As a result the only things available were the full English breakfast either with meat or vegetarian, and scrambled or fried eggs. Toast and coffee were also available. We were quite happy with that.

We both got the Vegetarian full English breakfast which consists of eggs, broiled tomatoes and mushrooms and vegetarian sausage. That with a rack of toast and coffee was great!

By the time we left things had begun to calm down a bit.

The front desk called a taxi for us and we were whisked off to the airport to pick up our rental car.

We ended up with a little Skoda. Pretty functional little car.

We headed out of Manchester toward Colwyn Bay where we had a simple lunch at a local cafe.

After lunch we headed to The Great Orme Mines. They were discovered back in 1987 when a plan to make a parking lot out of the area was begun. As they began to excavate the area they discovered ancient digging tools. They stopped building the parking lot and began excavating this curious new discovery.

What they found was a huge Bronze Age copper mine that was over 6000 years old.

We left there and headed to Conwy Castle near Llandudno.

Built for Edward I, by Master James of St George, the castle is amongst the finest surviving medieval fortifications in Britain.

We spent quite a bit of time there and took a lot of pictures. Here are a few.

Next we headed through Snowdonia National Park and on to Beddgelert our home for the next four nights.

We are staying at The Tanronnen a popular inn and pub in Beddgelert at the base of Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. Click on the link above to learn about Beddgelert and how it got it’s name!

It’s really beautiful here and we are enjoying our trip immensely. Flowers are blooming everywhere! My favorite Bluebells are all over even coming up in the cracks between grave stones at the old church in Beddgelert.

Oh, I almost forgot, we made a friend when we walked into the church cemetery. This little cat came running up to us meowing and wanting affection, which she got in droves. Such a sweet little thing.