Growing up in Llandudno, Wales

Sorry for the repeat pictures - still learning how to do this stuff!

This is Llandudno. Actually if you are interested in learning more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llandudno is a neat link and has a great panorama photo there too.

Llandudno is a relatively small town (a little over a mile by a mile) and sits between two sea shores. The first photo shows one end of the town and the black and white shows the other end - which is the one I frequented more as a kid as we lived about a block from it. The main shore was far more commercial and had the big hotels - the other shore was much more to my taste with a vast sandy beach, sand dunes and cliffs and rocks where the sea would pound. The photograph I duplicated is of a gardens situated on the Orme(the mountain dominating Llandudno) and it was there that my grandfather worked as a gardener. The main street (Mostyn Street) shown on the final photo is where the bulk of Llandudno's shopping was and I have a memory it seems for almost every foot of it - ranging from the ice cream parlor where my friend Sylvia would hang out, to the ladies stores where we drooled at the latest fashions. Cinemas we went to. Dance pavilions where we danced, sweet shops (candy stores) where we perused seemingly for hours picking what we would buy with our very limited funds. My favorite was licorice allsorts, and English Toffee (hard enough to break your teeth).

My parents met at Pavilion on the shore by the hotels. On Sundays it used to have concerts and there was a balcony all around the inside with tables and chairs where people would mill around, meet, talk and listen to the music. My father and his best friend Bob started talking with my mother and her sister and they arranged to double date the following week in the neighboring town where my mother lived. Bob eventually married my aunt Lu, and my parents romance blossomed from there. One fun anecdote on their first date: my father decided to buy my mother a box of chocolates, but he had to travel about thirty minutes on the tram to her town, so he couldn't resist sampling them. He showed up with a very pretty box with a ribbon on it and ONE chocolate.