Wales, Day 1, Llandudno

To give you an idea of how much I liked Wales, take a look at my hotel room. Make sure to look out the window as much as you can. Yes, that's the ocean. THE OCEAN! It was gorgeous! And not rainy, but moderately sunny and just beautiful!

I love the ocean, at least in theory. In reality, of course, it's salty and sticky and if your dog goes in and rolls on whatever dead things it finds, pretty smelly. But it's also just so powerfully beautiful.

I took a picture of me dipping my toe into the North Atlantic. (I also dipped my fingers in. Yes, I'm happy to swim in oceans, but I prefer them a bit warmer. I also prefer when I remember to bring a bathing suit.)

The beach is really rocky, but when you look at pictures taken in the Victorian era (when Llandudno was one of the beach resort places to go), the beaches look a lot sandier. I'm not sure if there's been a lot of erosion or what.

But it's drop dead beautiful. Look at the uplifting layers there!

We stayed in LLandudno for two nights, Friday and Saturday, though most of the day Saturday we spent elsewhere. I really enjoyed walking around Llandudno, though. One afternoon, I happened on the post office, so I went in to buy stamps, since I buy postcards to send to friends and family and wanted to send some off. And while I was there, I asked the counter guy how to pronounce the name of the city, and he helped me. And then some other people also helped with some basics (which, alas, I promptly forgot). That did give me the chance to ask them for a dinner suggestion, and they suggested a pub called The Albert. So that's where I went. And there I had a tasty smoked haddock with mash and some hollandaise sauce and a small cider. It was just about as perfect a dinner as one could ask for.

I got to see some juvenile herring gulls up close. This one even posed for me.

And on the second night, a bunch of semi-old (from the fifties and later to about the 80s) racing type cars were parked along the beach promenade, so I enjoyed walking by and seeing them. I was told (by someone in a racing type outfit) that there'd been a rally with races and stuff and this was the end of the rally thing.

There's a cool boardwalk, which reminded me of Santa Cruze beach boardwalk, except without quite the number of rides I remember. And with a lot more big Georgian buildings all attached along a block, rather than frilly California "Victorians." (I love California Victorians, but they don't look like anything built in the 19th century I've seen here at all.