I have fallen in love...

...with Portmeirion!  Although only an hour's drive from our house, it has always been somewhere on my list of places to visit and after a washout of a weekend, with fair weather forecast for Bank Holiday Monday, hubby decided to take us out for the day!  And what a day!  The weather was amazing and just made the beautiful Italianate village of Portmeirion even more stunning!...

...On entering, you are met with a kaleidoscope of prettily painted buildings in every style you could imagine...

...My little man came along (Big man is on his way back from a football trip to Holland!) and posed for plenty of photos!  The gardens are just stunning and I could have just picked them up and brought them home - I was amazed by the use of colour, materials and decoration!  Everything is made to look beautiful, even the generator and electricity buildings have stunning facades!...

...You could easily have been in a little Italian village with the fabulous sunshine...

...and stunning architecture!  ( I know, I know, I am gushing a bit, but I never thought that I would love the place as much as I did!)...

...The village is set on the sheltered side of a peninsula, so it is almost subtropical in it's planting and climate.  We walked out to the lighthouse passing the lovely Portmeirion Hotel...

...The hotel pool...

...A view of the village from the little landtrain that tours the forest part of the gardens.  I think that the weather certainly helped to stir such strong emotions for the place, but it really is a beautiful place to visit if you ever get the opportunity!
To top it off, on the way home, well, via a bit of a detour, we stopped off at Llanberis (the village at the foot of Mount Snowdon) in the hope of taking litlle man on the Electric Mountain tour, but with the Bank Holiday weekend, they were all booked - so that'll have to be another outing one of these fine days!...

...We did wander up to Dolbadarn Castle and enjoyed the view out over the reservoir, then came home to tea and cake!  All in all a wonderful family day out and hopefully one of many - we have a number of places that we've seen along the way to visit, all we need now is the weather to play fair!  Thanks for dropping by to see me and i hope you've ejoyed my little tour of this wonderful part of Wales!  Sorry for the lack of craftiness, but i will be back tomorrow with some inspiration for our new challenge at Passion for Promarkers - don't forget, you still have a little bit of time to enter into our Anniversary challenge to ' Use diecuts' but you'll have to be quick!
Hugs,