When we were looking at moving to Turks and Caicos last year, one of the facts we had read that had got us most excited was that they received 350 days of sunshine per year!
This area of North Wales that we are living in has just 50 days of sunshine per year in comparison! That means I'm missing out on 300 extra days of blue skies and basking sunlight! How sad is that!
Fortunately for us, these very sporadic sunny days seem to always occur when we have visitors and it was no exception this past weekend when Kathy and Jarryd came to visit. So we made the most of it!
We took them to Conwy first, and walked the walls,
and stopped for a little pic outside the smallest house in Great Britain (are you noticing a pattern here? yeah I know we did the same things when my sister came to visit but Wales is pretty limited for fun exciting things to do!)
By snapped this picture of this very co-operative seagull, I was rather enamoured with his polka dot feathers at the back!
This was one of the cool little arches along the section of the town wall leading up to the castle.
Here is the castle, for those of you who've forgotten what it looks like!
After that we decided to go on a little hike which was cut short because of Wales and it's unpredictability with weather! Yes that blue sky and sunshine didn't last for long! Pretty soon the rain started and the wind was so strong that the boys were leaning into it on the top of the hill we climbed and it was holding them!!
Here's Kathy demonstrating with her scarf just how windy it was!
and Jarryd getting blown away!
but even the biting cold that made our faces numb for ages afterwards was worth it for the pretty good view we got to see...
After that we had a nice Mountainous drive to Betws-y-coed in search of a nice little tearoom to help warm us up.
After stopping in one place that had the driest looking cakes and had sold out of scones, we moved on in search of better! and I'm so glad we did because I finally found GOOD CAKE in Wales! (yes, I feel like that needs to be shouted from the rooftops...it only took me 6 months after all!!)
We stumbled into The Alpine Cafe, which is situated in a touristy row of shops and is just beside the little train station. Their selection of baked goods was more than a little impressive, especially when you compare it to what other places in Wales usually have on offer. This Cafe was in a league of their own! They had giant homemade meringues in all kinds of delightful flavours, I had my eye on the coconut and banana variety but unfortunately they had all sold out - it was quite late in the day but there was plenty of cake left! I opted for some moist and delicious chocolate bundt cake (see above) with chocolate glaze on and mini honeycomb pieces. We also got hot chocolate with marshmallows, I'm not usually a hot choc fan - they are never chocolatey enough for me - but this one was so delicious!!
By and Jarryd got the banana cake with toffee frosting! An interesting twist on the usual boring flavour combos you see, and it was really delicious! They must have had at least 16 different offerings of sweet treats on their counter from brownies to muffins to biscotti's to cookies, and of course only after we sat down did I see on their menu they did real ice cream milkshakes too (another thing which I have not yet found here in North Wales - and not through lack of trying!) So it was the perfect ending to a great day.
Alpine Cafe - you can bet we'll be back!
