The Prince of Wales admitted that he needs to brush up on his Welsh as he made his first trip to the nation since taking up his new title.
William and Kate, the new Princess of Wales, were given a warm welcome as they visited a lifeboat station where a small boy who had been waiting for four hours to see the couple was plucked from the crowd to give them flowers.
Rebecca Crompton, mother of four year old Theo, said they had been on their way to school when they changed their mind at the last minute to see William and Kate at the Holyhead RNLI lifeboat station.
Theo was plucked from the crowd by William's private secretary Jean-Christophe Gray so he could give the roses they had brought to the prince and princess himself.
As the princess admired his school tie, William joked to his private secretary: "He's got a smarter tie than you, J-C!"
Afterwards Theo's mother said: "I'm overwhelmed. He has been holding flowers stood here for a while. We just thought it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to come down."
As the couple arrived at the lifeboat station the couple reminisced about living nearby on Anglesey when William was a search and rescue helicopter pilot based at RAF Valley.
He said: "It's good to be back, it really is. It feels like going back in time, seeing where we all started to be a family unit."
Anglesey is where they raised their eldest child, Prince George, for the first few months of his life.
However even though William is now Prince of Wales his command of the language is still a bit lacking.
He has "a couple of phrases", he said, but added: "I'm going to have to branch out a bit."
The royal couple had promised to visit at the earliest opportunity following the death of the Queen, and returned hoping to begin “deepening the trust and respect” they have with the people of Wales, said a royal source.
Holyhead is one of the oldest lifeboat stations on the Welsh coast and, across the years, members have received a total of 70 awards for gallantry.
They met local RNLI president Graham Drinkwater, 74, who told them how he started on the lifeboats in 1966 and did his last call in 2002.
"I started going to the lifeboat station as a kid and eventually became called on to the crew. No training as such - you were just thrown in the deep end."
When Kate asked him about the rescues he had taken part in, William interrupted with a laugh: "Don't start him off! 66 to 2002 - it will be a while!"
The couple also met Mark Wade, 49, who told them how he had once led the rescue of a Jack Russell which had fallen 30 feet from a breakwater on to a bed of seaweed. "We managed to locate the dog, retrieve it safely and get it back to its owner.
"William and Kate were really interested in the different types of calls we get. This one sticks in the mind because we tend to go out to people, but this involved an animal."
William told coxswain Tony Price how he liked to keep a low profile while working in search and rescue. Describing one incident he said: "I had my visor on, and was hoping nobody could recognise my dulcet tones on the radio."
In a walkabout outside the couple recalled how their first job after announcing their engagement was for Kate to launch a lifeboat at nearby Trearddur Bay. The prince said: "She broke the bottle on the boat - it really does work!"
The princess also stopped to talk to a woman who had a friend's dog tucked up inside her jacket. Michelle Challis-Jones, 50, said: "She said, 'He's like a hot water bottle!'"
She added that she had met William several times before in a job as a train guard. "He was lovely every time."
