Starting the Day in Conwy
Conwy Castle — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
One of the best reasons to stay overnight in Conwy rather than visiting as a day tripper is breakfast. The town has excellent cafes that open early, guest houses and B&Bs that take their morning meal seriously, and the particular pleasure of walking through quiet medieval streets before the day visitors arrive — with the castle in the early light and the harbour coming to life — before settling in somewhere warm for a proper cooked breakfast. The morning atmosphere in Conwy is genuinely special and is available only to those who sleep here.
Where to Eat Breakfast
L's Coffee and Bookshop on the High Street is the most consistently recommended spot for breakfast in the town centre. The full breakfast here is generous, well-sourced and cooked carefully — local bacon and sausages, good eggs, fresh toast, and coffee from a barista who knows what they are doing. It is dog friendly, unhurried and makes an excellent start to a day of exploring the castle and walls. Booking is not usually necessary for breakfast but arriving early gives the best choice.
The Castle Hotel brasserie on High Street also serves breakfast and is open to non-residents, offering a more formal setting than the cafés — four-star surroundings, a menu built on locally sourced North Wales produce, and steps from the castle gate. It suits those who want a sit-down hotel breakfast without having booked a room there.
For those staying in a guest house or B&B, breakfast is often included in the room price and can be one of the highlights of the stay. The better establishments in Conwy source locally: Welsh back bacon, sausages made to local recipes, eggs from nearby farms, and homemade bread and preserves. If breakfast quality matters to you, it is worth reading recent reviews specifically about the morning meal before booking accommodation.
The Full Welsh Breakfast
The Welsh cooked breakfast is broadly similar to a full English but has its own distinctive character. Welsh back bacon tends to be leaner and differently cured than the standard British supermarket rasher. Welsh sausages are often made to traditional local recipes with a high meat content. And then there is laverbread — a paste made from laver seaweed, which is cooked and either served on its own alongside the other elements or mixed with oatmeal and fried as a small cake.
Laverbread is an acquired taste for those encountering it for the first time. It has a strong, marine, slightly iron-rich flavour that is entirely unlike anything else on a breakfast plate, and first-time visitors sometimes find it challenging. It is, however, a genuinely ancient and distinctively Welsh food — laver has been harvested from Welsh beaches for centuries — and trying it at least once is part of understanding the local food culture. Most cafes and B&Bs offering a full Welsh breakfast will be happy to leave it off if you prefer, but do try it first.
Practical Information
Most cafes in Conwy open between 8:30 and 9:30am and serve breakfast until around 11:30am or noon. L's Coffee and Bookshop fills up quickly on summer mornings and peak weekends — arriving before 9:30am gives you the best chance of a table without waiting. The Castle Hotel brasserie is a more formal alternative and tends to be slightly less pressured at peak times.
If you are planning a full day of sightseeing — castle (£11.10 adults, £7.80 juniors), walls, Plas Mawr and the quay — a proper cooked breakfast is worth having rather than starting on a pastry and coffee alone. The castle circuit and a full walk of the town walls together cover several miles of steps, slopes and uneven ground, and the energy is useful. See our one-day Conwy itinerary for a suggested schedule that builds breakfast in as the proper first event of the day.
Day trips