Minding the Gap: A Magical Christmas in North Wales

After three trips back to the States this summer for various reasons, early on we decided we would spend Christmas here in the UK. While we knew we would miss spending time with friends and family, I have always wanted a romantic Christmas with just the two of us someplace interesting.

So several months ago we started the hunt for the perfect spot - I wanted something right out of the move "Holiday". My friend Claire suggested we check out a site called Rural Retreats. They have a number of great little cottages available to rent, and even better, many of them allow dogs. We found a great little stone cottage called Ty Ucha'r Ffordde in North Wales in a little town called Conwy.

So we rented a car and set out for our first adventure driving on the other side of the road. Greg did a great job and the drive was nearly incident free. It was great to get out of the city and be on the open road. Traffic wasn't great so our 4.5 hour drive was closer to 6 hours. Despite arriving in the dark, we miraculously found our cozy cottage which exceeded our expectations. They had set up a small Christmas tree and has a bottle of champagne out for us.

We spent the next six days reading by the fire, cooking lots of tasty meals and Christmas cookies, and I did a bit of knitting. A couple of days we went out on hikes in the countryside and only got truly lost once. Morgan had a tremendous time chasing pheasants and trying to communicate with the sheep that were on every hillside. We to town for one brief trip to see the castle. It's a tiny but cute town.

Christmas dinner was a great success with my first attempt at a lamb crown roast which I've always wanted to try, but was too intimidated to tackle until now. It turned out really well and I think it might be a permanent addition to my Christmas menu. We also had mashed potatoes, green beans with shallots, steamed veggies, and Greg tackled the buttermilk biscuits and made a fabulous lemon tart for dessert. It was delicious.