Weekend in York!

With our program, an overnight trip to York, England was included. We were really excited to go even though we didn't know much about what was in York. Although we read through our itinerary, we hadn't heard of any of the places that were mentioned, but after about 4 hours by bus, we arrived at York and were led on a guided tour of the city. 

The town is really picturesque and cute with little shops and restaurants on every corner and at the center of the town is York Minster, a church. It is definitely the largest landmark in the area and is absolutely beautiful! Our program gave us free entrance to the Minster, and the inside of it was amazing as well.

With intricate stained glass windows on the inside and flying buttresses on the outside, which I learned about in my art history class, I really enjoyed the tour! 

After that, we had the rest of the day free to ourselves so a group of us grabbed dinner and then went back to our hostel. Although it may sound uneventful it definitely wasn't... Because as we were walking to our hostel from dinner we saw this guy run into the road and try to hit a car while it drove by. I thought it looked like trouble, so when we walked by him and his two girl friends I went into the road to avoid him. Except my other friend didn't know what to do cause he was swerving and so she just stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and accidentally brushed against him. Then, all of his friends got really mad and started screaming at our friend that she pushed him. After our other friend responded saying it wasn't her fault, they started shoving her and then told us they were gypsies. We eventually got away from them after they yelled at us more, but getting into a fight with gypsies in York was definitely not in our plan.

The next day we woke up and headed to our second destination in Yorkshire, Fountains Abbey. Fountains Abbey is an old monastary. A lot of it is ruins of what used to be a fully functioning home to thousands of devout monks.

However, since the Abbey was constructed so well, as is the case with a lot of old religious structures, it has maintained alot of its character, such as its molding and even a green face on the outside of its front doors to keep evil away.

Our tour guide took us through all the rooms and told us a little about what it would of been used for originally. Many rooms were dedicated to prayer and there was a huge hole in one of the walls where a large fire would have been kept for warmth during the winter. After we explored the rest of the Abbey we went on a walk to the gardens nearby. It was too cold for any flowers, but the landscaping was nice and it was relaxing to just stroll around.

After this we headed to Haworth which is where the Bronte sisters lived and wrote all their works of literature. It was a cute little town and it was obvious that they were proud of the Bronte sister legacy, since all of the streets were named after them.

We went to a small cafe for lunch and had gigantic Yorkshire Puddings with roast. We thought it was the most appropriate thing to order since after all, we were in Yorkshire! They were delicious and so fulling.

Then our tour guide took us to the moors where Emily Bronte got the inspiration for where Heathcliff roamed in  the classic novel Wuthering Heights. It was really cool to see the fields of moors. It really is a different type of landscape and is definitely mysterious. It was incredibly windy that day and it was a huge workout to get to the top of the hill where you could see all of the moors and the town. However, it was worth it because the view was great!

I could just imagine Emily Bronte looking down at her town the same way we did that day. It is grassy and has random hills, valleys, and holes. Cailin found this out the hard way. As we were walking back down the hill the wind was pushing us and Cailin decided to run down some of the hill with the gust of wind. Before we knew it she had tripped over a clump of grass and fell face first on the moors. The grass was soft so she didn't get hurt, but we all got a good laugh that she face planted at the moors. Haha, aw my klutzy sister!