Put on your seatbelt, you’re in for a ride today! We started in Scotland, actually left Scotland this morning, boarded a plane for Manchester England. Once we landed in Manchester, we were going to get tickets for the train to Conwy, Wales, but we met Micheal Daniel Patrick Keene, a delightful cab driver.
You see, the train would take us four hours to get to Wales and Michael Daniel Patrick Keene the cab driver could get us there in a little over an hour. We discussed a fair price, he turned off his meter and away we went, leaving the train station behind.
Now Michael Daniel Patrick Keene is not a young man, a delightful fellow, well into his mature years, we figured somewhere close to 80’s and perhaps beyond. He told us he had never been to Conwy Wales before but that he would get us there, not to worry. (He drove an old traditional English cab so I don’t think he had GPS, and I was afraid to ask.) It was another adventure! We chatted the entire way, talking about his life and ours and before we knew it Conwy started showing up on the motorway signs so we knew he took the right road.
Once into town Michael Daniel Patrick Keene asked a local where the hotel was, but we had to circle the town a couple of times to find it, and then he just kind of ran the taxi up on the sidewalk a bit and dropped us off. He was a real gentleman and helped us with our luggage getting it out of the cab. I should have snapped a photo, but he was parked up on the sidewalk and people were trying to get by and as it turned out, he missed the hotel by half a block, so we did have to hike up the hill a bit, but that’s okay. It was the most fun ride in a cab we’ve had. He said he had a great time and now he could tell people he’d been to Conwy. What a character!
The Castle Hotel, where we are staying for the next few days, is very nice and is just around the corner from Conwy Castle, which we will be visiting tomorrow. A few photos of our room.
We dropped our luggage and headed for a pub. Dick has this mid-day pub thing down now. He’ll have to be retrained when we return to the states.
Conwy is a little seaport town so it is refreshing to walk by the ocean and take in the sea breezes, look at the boats, and watch the children crabbing. It is a really big deal for them to throw a line with some bait over the side of the dock and pull up small crabs. I have no idea what they do with them afterward, but the kids seem to be having fun. We stopped for ice cream after lunch. Yummy!
I love the fact that dogs have just as important place in life here as people. Most of the pubs have watering kegs for the dogs. Here are a few we thought were cute.
The town is not very big as we found out and it was about 5:00 pm so we returned to the hotel to unpack. And, it was cocktail time after all. There is a strange custom with pubs here, some serve food and some don’t. When we were down by the ocean a couple of pubs just served drinks and recommended other pubs in town if you wanted food to eat. The no food pubs don’t serve snacks or anything. I just think it’s strange not a peanut in sight, just beer or whatever liquor is served. I would think that would be a liability, but clearly posted are taxi driver numbers. And people do book taxies a lot when they go out – similar to how we use uber and lyft.
Back at our hotel pub we ordered a starter as they are called here or appetizer as they are known in the states and shared that as our dinner. We ate and drank too much through the day again to do dinner. And out of character we tried their beef chili nachos. I know, we’re crazy, but they were really good. The Welsh dish was mac and cheese balls and that just didn’t sound good. I think this was the better choice. It was very nicely presented too.
Miscellaneous photos from the day.
