Catching Up

There's a reason I was never successful at writing in a diary.  Because it's hard for me to do it often (that's what she said), and I get way behind.

Anyway, I owe you a lot of info.  I've been several new places and done lots of things over the last few weeks that I haven't shared with you.  You probably won't get all the details that you deserve, but I'll do my best to share as much as I can!  So, a la This American Life (because I'm a nerd), this blog is split into four acts.

ACT ONE:  York, and York again

A month ago, now, I went to York.  Then, 2 weeks ago, I went to York again.  I'll explain why in a minute.  York is such a gorgeous old city, built by the Romans many many centuries ago.   The central highlight is most definitely York Minster, a ridiculously fabulous church you can't miss. 

Oh, you mean the giant one you can see from pretty much anywhere in the city?

It's amazing inside and out.  We went down into the crypts (in a couple places you can actually see skeleton fragments in the walls) and saw the remnants of the foundations of a Roman fort, and then the Saxon one on top of that, then the Norman cathedral, and finally the "modern" Minster, built in medieval times.  The other highlight is climbing the tower to see the view of the city.  When we first went Friday the tower was closed due to high winds (thanks for making me feel safe, York), but we went back Saturday and it was reopened!  Yay...  So, another tiny spiral staircase.  Not only that, but if you buy now, we'll throw in a walk along at roof level between the two towers to make it the rest of the way up!  My knees trembled, my stomach queased, but we made it to the top and it was once again worth it for the views.  From the top you can see the lines of the stone fortification walls that still surround the city and the ruins of other ancient buildings.



We went on a ghost walk Friday night, which was extremely entertaining, if not particularly frightening.  There's a nice bunch of graveyards and old hanging grounds in the city, along with some plague stories and a general history of disease and unsanitary nastiness.  My personal favorite was the legend that many hundreds of years ago, the workers on the Minster got revenge on their douche of a supervisor by burying his beloved dog in the walls (I know, sad).  Supposedly, if you're lucky you can hear the poor dog's ghost barking from the wall near the entrance.  Our tour also took us down a street called The Shambles, which is perhaps the most famous (and famously disgusting) medieval street.  Some of the buildings are from as far back as the 14th century, but thankfully it is no longer butcher's row, where the meat remnants get chucked in the street.

Here it is in the daytime in all its medieval glory, with the buildings all leany and the streets all cobbly.

We saw a bunch of other things, and ate some good food and walked a lot, but one of the other highlights was our hostel.  It was a bit of a walk out of the city center, but it was fabulous.  For pretty cheap, the three of us got a four-person room to ourselves.  It was clean, had a lovely little bar, where we got a drink and proceeded to work on a Harry Potter puzzle and affably insult some Minnesotans.  There was also a lounge on our floor with a TV, so we watched some actual live British television for the first time while we ate our lunch.  It's odd what makes us happy.

So, trip #1 to York = success.  It's gorgeous, historied, friendly (though eerily dead at night).  Then we learned that the National Railway Museum in York would be hosting actual rides on the Hogwarts Express!!!!!!!


We went back.

Aww, yeah.

Pretty much our entire second trip to York consisted of finding the Museum, waiting in line for an hour to get on the train while being ridiculously nerdy and excited, and riding the train for a few minutes.  WORTH IT.


ACT TWO:  Cambridge

Whew, on to Cambridge.  I went for a day trip here with a program called Give it a Go.  It's offered through the student union at Leeds Uni, and you pay a reasonable fee to get transportation to and from.  Then they hand you a map of the city, a list of interesting places, and a time to be back on the bus, and leave you to your own devices.  Luckily, Cambridge is a pretty easy place to manage.  It's dominated by (surprise, surprise) Cambridge University and all its colleges.  The recognizable one is King's College, which we couldn't go in (because we have terrible luck with timing these things).

That's the one.

We did get to go in the Chapel, which was beautiful, but not that stand-outy.  The best bit was seeing Rubens' Adoration of the Magi, because I'm an art nerd.  We also walked around some of the other college buildings, although never on the grass, because they are very OCD about their preciously trimmed lawns.

Seriously, these signs are everywhere.  "NE MARCHEZ PAS SUR LES PELOUSES."  It even sounds bitchy in French.

The university and the city feel...smart.  We were there during a graduation time, so people were walking around in robes and fur-collared capes (I was informed that is unfortunately not how they dress all the time).  And all I could think about were the people that are Cambridge alumni.  I mean, whatever your interest, at least one of your personal heroes went here.  So I hear you like science.  Newton, Darwin, Hawking.  Economics major?  Keynes, Friedman.  Or maybe you're the writing type.  Marlowe, Nabokov, C.S. Lewis.  Or movies/TV is your thing.  Hugh Laurie, John Cleese and Eric Idle.  Gandalf.  (And Borat.)  The whole place makes me feel unworthy.

We went to the art museum, where I drooled over some more Raphael, Renoir, and Reynolds.  We went on an epic quest to find a public toilet (not as easy as you'd think), meandered through a few more churches, went to a sweets shop and a pub and got back on the bus.  Getting back to Leeds was a little bit of an aesthetic letdown in comparison to Cambridge, but the pretension readings dropped a lot, too.

ACT THREE: The Lake District

Two weeks ago, I took my act to the Lake District for another Give It a Go day trip.  In all honestly, I would have paid the 15 quid just for the bus trip.  Really.  The hills and lakes and cliffs and stone farmwalls and little villages and...sheep.  There's a reason everyone came up here to write their poetry.  But we did get to leave the bus for several hours on the banks of lovely Lake Windermere.

LOOK AT THE PRETTY.

There was a bit of a Hitchcockian Birds moment when the swans and ducks were swarming, but we avoided disaster and got some lunch.  Then, we took a ferry ride across the lake and back, which seemed like a fabulous way to spend an hour.  And it was, besides the freezing cold wind.  We toughed it out in true Wisconsin fashion without leaving the top, open-air deck for the warmth of the inside bit.  There are all these old mansions set into the woods on the shoreline (although most of them have been snapped up by capitalists and turned into resorts)

ACT FOUR: Haworth

Finally, we're almost there!  Yesterday, I went on a short day trip to Haworth (only less than an hour away) with a bunch of International Students.  (We actually went to Saltaire first, but it was pretty...dull.  The highlights were the Old Moon Cafe, where we had mid-morning tea and pastries, and the cafe where we had sandwiches for lunch.  I'm serious--the place was overshadowed by the food.  It's an old mill town where even the mill buildings have been converted to other uses like shopping so you can't even look at the history.  Oh, wait.  I thought of another highlight.  The founder of the town and the mill is named Titus Salt.  I am naming my firstborn that.)

Anyways.  Where was I?  Yes, Haworth.  There's really one reason most people go to Haworth: it's where the Bronte siblings spent most of their lives.  We walked up this giant hill on a cobbled street to get to the top of town.  There we saw the church, where Charlotte and Emily are buried in a vault with their parents and brother (Anne is buried in Scarborough).  Right beyond the church graveyard is the Bronte's house, because their father was the Haworth parson.

There it is!

For a price, we got to walk through the house, which has been little altered since the 1850s, when Charlotte died.  Much of the furniture is original, so we got to see the literal sofa where Emily is believed to have died in 1848 at age 30, a mere year after publishing her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights.  There's also a decent-sized display of Charlotte's possessions--clothing, writing desk, letters.  She outlived all her siblings, only to die in 1855, nine months after getting married, and probably pregnant at the time of her death.  As you can probably imagine, there is a heavy air of tragedy over the whole house.  But it's also a place for celebration, with first editions of the sisters' novels and displays detailing the life of their masterpieces in reprintings, film, plays, graphic novels, you name it.  It seems a veritable shrine to their remarkable genius.  Anyway, if you're like me--it's heaven.

We wandered a bit around the field behind the house, and got a good look at the picturesque landscape that probably inspired some of the Gothic flair in their writing.  But beyond that, Haworth isn't really a bustling sort of town.  We went in a soap and sweets shop, a few bookstores, a couple odd tchotchke vendors.  And then it was back on the bus and back to Leeds for a nice evening of studying (and by "studying" I mean "reading Harry Potter and going to bed earlyish").

Oooooh.  I feel strangely like writing a dense Romantic novel right about now.

Wow.  That was a lot of catching up to do.  Are you tired?  I'm tired.  I feel like we've traipsed all about the country at this point.

I know I skimmed and breezed over a lot of stuff, so feel free to ask questions if you're interested in anything.  I'll post soon about my upcoming travel plans, which are extensive and extremely exciting.  :)

xo