Spring! (Thank goodness...)

Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different. Instead of my customary whining about the lack of good mac & cheese or Mexican food, I thought I'd talk about some of the things I love about living in York/England. That, and gush about how happy I am that spring is finally here. I don't think I could've stood the constant cold, windy, rainy winter days much more. I now understand why they advocate those sunlamps for people who live in areas that don't get much sun over the winter months.

First up: Jumbo Chinese Buffet. I only recently (read: yesterday) tried out this wonderful, wonderful restaurant, but that was enough to propel it onto the list of awesome places. For 5.99, you can enjoy an all-you-can eat lunch buffet of deliciousness. Dinner costs more, but you get more options. You can enjoy all kinds of rice, noodles, entree dishes, soups, veggies, and appetizers. Plus, these amazing pineapple-fried dough ball things. So good. So I finally found good Chinese in York. Only downside is that it is pretty much just a buffet and as far as I know, doesn't do take out. Alas.

Next up: Bootham Bites. I didn't think to take a picture of the restaurant, so instead you get a picture of my favorite option there- the Yorkshire Ham & Mature Cheddar (or as I call it, the ham & cheese) panini. I'm pretty sure I've already waxed poetic elsewhere in this blog about chicken and bacon sandwiches, but these are quickly growing to rival the chicken & bacon for my affections. And I don't even normally like ham. But they don't really do ham lunchmeat like we do in the states, instead you get slices of real ham on a sandwich. After living here, I've come to the conclusion that it was never the ham that I disliked, it was the honey-baked hams that I disliked. I prefer ham to be kind of salty rather than sweet. Congratulations, England. You've overcome my dislike of ham, mayonnaise, and onion (although after a certain point I start picking them out of my food again. So maybe I've only sort of gotten over my aversion to onions.) In a country where sandwich shops rule the streets, Bootham Bites makes some excellent ones (the bree, bacon & cranberry sauce one is also really good).

Nom nom nom

Boots' sparkling blackcurrant apple juice: This is to England what Club Orange was to Ireland for me. So good. And for the record, my love for it has NOTHING to do with the fact that the bottle is purple. That's really all I have to say on that front. :)

Street food: I have yet to have bad street food, with the possible exception of the kind of cold paella I had one time (but to be fair, it was the first week of February so I totally blame it on the weather. Oh, and the Brits insist on pronouncing the l's. I made a point of pronouncing it properly and the vendor guy gave me the biggest smile ever). I love the international market that pops up on Parliament Street every so often. Yeah, its the same stuff all the time, but its yummy. Danish pancakes with Baileys & whipped cream? Yes please. Baklava? Heck yeah. Polish potato pancake things? Yum. But even when that's not running, there are all kinds of stalls with crepes, "kinky donuts" (I have yet to try those but they're on the list!), sausages, etc. And the ice cream carts have recently reappeared!

You can't see him in this picture, but the crowd gathered be hind the ice cream cart is watching a street performer juggle & do balance tricks. It isn't Faneuil Hall, but it'll do :)

I just liked the slogan on this one :)

Now let's talk pasties. That's "past" like something that has already happened + ie, not like the glue. These flakey pastry envelopes of delicious filling are classic inexpensive British eat-on-the-go, or eat on a bench watching everyone in the square, whatever floats your boat. The traditional pasty is steak & onion, but I tend to prefer the varieties with a bit less onion. Cheese & bacon is delicious when you can find it, other good choices are pork & apple and ham, brie & cranberry. 

While it isn't a food, I'll stick the Gap on this list. I _never_ shopped there in the States because I tend to be a "Can I find something comparable elsewhere for less?" kind of shopper. But England has this great thing called the "Midseason sale" when ALL of the stores have big sales. So I wandered into the Gap one afternoon and emerged with like 5 layering shirts and a navy jacket that I love and adore (and for 18 pounds! That's like $27 for a jacket! And from Gap! Who knew?) I think part of why I'm more open to the Gap here is because pounds are smaller #s. 6 pounds for a t-shirt feels like a deal (even thought its like $10 and that's about the most I'd spend on one at home). Either way, I got some much needed layering pieces for spring. At home I usually go straight from light sweaters to t-shirts, but we've got a bit more of spring here.

Which is a perfect segue to my next topic: spring time in York. The endless rain is mostly gone (although we still get the odd rainy day/s) and temperatures are up in the high 50s/low 60s. Sunglasses have been worn 3 times now (oooh, aaaaah!). But more importantly, flowers are springing up everywhere. Daffodils are up in pretty much every patch of grass in the city:

along the walls,

 in the alley off my street,

Museum Gardens in the ruins of the abbey  

and in front of the Yorkshire Museum,

even among the gravestones in church graveyards.

I love all the daffodils. Yellow flowers are my favorite because they just seem so cheerful. They help make the city a bit more sunny, especially on overcast days. Sadly I think my little yellow rose plant has bit the dust after a month. I probably should have bought it a real pot instead of leaving it in the plastic one it came in. Oh well. On Friday, I'm taking the "Harry Potter train" to "Hogsmead," but in the meantime, I have paper writing to do (boo!). See you next post.

Catching Up Part 2: They get snow here?!?

That's right, they do. Or at least they did this year. I missed most of it while I was home for Christmas, but the "arctic blast" as the headlines called it started two days before I flew home and made for adventures getting home for most of us.

The snow started in earnest on Friday, when our essays were due. So I went off in the snow to print my paper and turn it in and by the time I got out, there was REAL SNOW on the ground!

 So Rachel and I went to play in the snow in Museum Gardens. We made a friend :)

A maintenance (that word is tricky to spell...) guy popped out from behind King's Manor and offered our snowman a construction hat but it was too big for his head :(

Then there was general frolicking in the snow and I swung by Borders to pick up some ridiculously cheap books. Border's UK went out of business just before Christmas so the entire store went an additional 10% off every day until closing. When I was there they were down to 70% off and everything was going FAST.

So here's an artsy collection of York in the snow. Haven't seen it since a few days after I got back because it all melted.

You might not be able to tell but the snow was coming down HARD. So it was kind of nice to get inside for the CMS Christmas Party. All the papers were in and free food- who could pass that up?

I had my first mince pie at the party. Mince pies are apparently a treasured Advent tradition here. I can't say I really care for them though. It is basically mushed up fruit plus raisins and spices in a pastry. I guess the closest American parallel would be fruit cake, which I also am not a fan of. And no, the "mince" in mince pie does not refer to ground meat in this case. I spent a long time explaining that to several people who were very confused :)

Anyway, the snow messed with a lot of people's travel plans all over the place. (Especially because it was almost simultaneous with the Nor'easter that hit the mid-Atlantic in the US.) I actually really really lucked out with my travel arrangements.

I didn't fly out until Monday morning (Dec. 21st) so by that time the UK was starting to run on schedule again. People traveling over the weekend had some problems because the trains were really delayed as they tried to get the tracks cleared. And then the storm hit at home over the weekend and flights to Philadelphia and DC were all over the place. Anyway, here's my getting home story.

Sunday night I book train tickets. It cost like 15 pounds (Blogger hates my pound signs, sorry) less to take the 6 am train to the Manchester Airport instead of a 7 am one, so I went the cheap route. So I arranged for a cab to pick me up at 5:30 (no way was I walking the 25 minutes to the train station in the snow with a suitcase). I get up at like 4 in the morning to shower and finish packing. Then around 5, I check my flight status. I was flying US Airways and connecting in Philadelphia. Philadelphia got lots and lots of snow over the weekend. Flights to Philly on Sunday were pretty much all delayed or cancelled. US Airways has you enter in a flight number and either "today" or "tomorrow" for flight status. So I put in my flight number and Today and it shows up "CANCELLED." I immediately begin freaking out. But I figure, well, I've already paid for the train ticket, might as well go down to the airport and beg/plead my way onto a flight going SOMEWHERE in the United States and figure it out from there.

So I get to the train station and get my luggage stowed. I'd requested a forward-facing window seat near a luggage rack. They gave me a rear-facing aisle seat near a luggage rack. Oh well. I learned that I don't get motion sick on trains while seated backwards if it is so dark out that you can't tell what direction you're going. Anyway, about five minutes into the 2 hour train ride, my iPod freaks out: screen freezes blank lit-up white and I can't get it to turn off. I have since looked up how to force it to shut down, but at the time nothing I pushed did anything. I was forced to just leave it on in my purse until the battery drained out. Only took it like 12 hours..! I was stuck with no music for the whole trip. I was not a happy panda. Anyway, 2 hours later I collect my stuff and trundle off across all the moving walkways to the airport proper and find the US Airways Reservations help desk.

The blonde girl behind the counter finally stopped ignoring me and asked if I needed anything, to which I mumbled something incoherent about flight and canceled and Philadelphia and me plane yes please? She was all "Oh, well, there's one leaving today around 1:00, you'll need to wait in the queue to see if there are seats available." And I was like, "Humina what? But I thought today's flight was canceled?" "Oh no, yesterday's flight was canceled. If you were originally scheduled for today's flight, you're fine you'll just need to check in," she said, pointing halfway down the terminal towards the US Airways signs. So off I trundle with stuff in tow and find the "Philadelphia 1:00" sign where a woman sends me ALL the way back to where I had been. That was the end of the line. The only people that got to use the special, clear lane where the buggers that managed to check in online before US Airways disabled web check-in for the flight.

Now unlike pretty much every other airport I've been in, Manchester didn't really care about the stupidly long line of people trying to check in for this flight. (Think 2 full A330 flights trying to all get seats on one flight. Oh, and they had to reschedule everyone's connecting flight out of Philly because the transatlantic flight was delayed.) Instead of keeping the line/queue in an orderly fashion, they just let people stand wherever, so the line just went straight back across the terminal, blocking access to basically every other airlines' check-in desks. And for some reason every single person decided to cut through the line to the other side right in front of me no matter how far up the line had moved. The British gentleman behind me told me I was too nice to them. And I thought Americans were supposed to be the pushy ones! I think travelers everywhere are basically the same- harried and not terribly interested in being polite.

Anyway, 3 hours later, I make it up to the desk and get tickets and a rescheduled flight to DC from Philly. By the time I make it through security, I had about 20 minutes to grab breakfast/lunch before my flight was supposed to board. So I grabbed a "bacon breakfast roll" which is exactly what it sounds like- a roll that they shove some bacon in and microwave- and scurry off to the gate, where, surprise surprise, boarding has been delayed. By the time I'd finished my sandwich roll thing, they were ready to board. So everyone hurries up and sits down to "make up the delay" and then we sit there until 3, at which point I begin to worry about making my rescheduled connection, since I had a 2.5 hour layover time to go through customs and immigration and if we were leaving 2 hours late... that was going to be tight. But you know, worry about those things when you get to them.

As an aside, if you're looking at international airlines, I've ranked the airline food from some of the carriers I've flown.

1) Aer Lingus. Both the chicken and the lasagna are yummy, everything was recognizable and free Baileys. (granted, this data is a few years old at this point.)

2) US Airways. The pasta dinner entree was pretty good, and REALLY good panini type sandwiches for "lunch".

3) British Airways. Decent tea, yummy breakfast scones, dinner was ok. Weird British sandwiches for lunch. Although that goes for Britain in general. Really, is ham and cheese too boring for you? They do however inundate you with free alcohol if you're into that kind of thing.

4) KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. They told me I was eating chicken. The package said bbq chicken. That was neither chicken nor bbq as far as I could tell. You know its bad when the pile of peppers and corn is better than the meat. (Says the no-veggies girl.) I have no idea what was in the salad (some kind of meat and beans and other things I couldn't identify), you grabbed your own roll off a tray (that puts other people's germy hands too close to my food for my comfort) and I don't even remember what we got for breakfast because the dinner was that funky. Good inflight entertainment selection though.

Anyway, back to the point. Watched Postgrad on the in-flight entertainment, that hit a bit too close to home for comfort. At least I'm not working at my dad's luggage store. At least my dad doesn't HAVE a luggage store. Slept a bit. The plane lands and then proceeds to rumble over snow drifts and ice. That was the bumpiest part of the ride! Got off the plane in a mad rush because I had 45 minutes to make my connecting flight. I get to Immigration and of course I pick the line with the fewest people in it and it ends up being the slowest line EVER. But I get through it and then find I have to wait for my bag to redeposit it on another conveyor belt. Luckily my bag wasn't the last one. Unluckily I had to get clear across the Philadelphia International Airport.

The airport staff getting my bag said I'd be fine, just take the shuttle at the A gates. The shuttle wasn't running out of the A gates- too much snow. I had to run down to the C gates (at which point I'm halfway to my gate anyway...). So I get on the shuttle and we bounce along off-road style over snow and ice that still hasn't been cleared the tarmac and I'm deposited at the gate just as they start to board. So all 12 of us get on the itty bitty plane to DC and then wait some more. Then we roll off to the runway. And wait some more. Finally we take off. The row in front of me has a mom and one two-year old twin while dad had the other one across the aisle. Now maybe I'm crazy, but I would have stopped trying to feed the kid in front of me after the first time he threw up. But not her! Determined mom! Vomit kid! Thank goodness it was a short flight. And thus I got home for Christmas because I always pick the cheapest travel options. If I'd gotten a later train or paid extra to fly home sooner, I'd have had a lot more problems.

And I came home to this:

That WAS over 2 feet of snow. It had kind of melted a bunch by the time I thought to take a picture. But you can kind of tell how much it was by using the mailbox as a reference.

Luckily the flight back to the UK wasn't so bad, although I flew back the day after I spent the day curled up on the couch with a fever. And I didn't get to sleep thanks to the baby sitting on the lap of the woman next to me that kept kicking me the entire flight. And then I got the last train to York that afternoon (weather problems struck again apparently. I didnt know, I was asleep as soon as I got back to my room).

Alrighty, so now we're basically caught up! I should do something exciting so that I have something to write about.

In the meantime, you can check out this:

http://www.york.ac.uk/medieval-studies/york-1190/

I'm assisting with the conference prep work. I'm putting together the book stalls so if you're a publisher and you want to come sell books, let me know! ;)

Some sightseeing

I finally got a chance to see some of the sights in the past two days. International student orientation is tomorrow and Saturday, with classes starting on Monday. So yesterday I wandered around the Yorkshire Museum and the Museum Gardens. The Museum was kind of cool (literally built on top of ruins of St Mary's Abbey, destroyed after the Dissolution care of Henry VIII and his quest for divorce/annulments.) Lots of Roman stuff, Anglo-Saxon stuff, and Medieval stuff, including the Middleham Jewel, which is pretty cool. I couldn't take pictures inside though, so if you're curious, there's a picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Middleham_jewel_1.jpg

The Gardens are really nice. Not as big or impressive as, say, the Boston Public Gardens, but it has super cool stuff like these ruins of the abbey. I'll be attending classes in King's Manor, which is right around the corner and was originally the house of the Abbot of St Mary's. After the Dissolution, it because the headquarters for the Council of the North.

After wandering around the Museum & Gardens, I took a walk along the medieval town walls, which are largely still standing. While you can't walk a complete circuit around the original city, long stretches are still standing; some parts are even the original Roman fortification walls, although most of the extant walls are post-Viking incursion. Fun fact: York has more miles of intact city wall than any other English city.

Here is Bootham Bar, one of the four gates into the medieval city. From here, you can climb up a stone staircase to gain access to the inside of the Bar and then on to the wall proper.

From the Bootham Bar section of the wall, you can get some pretty awesome pictures of the Minster. I'll try and put up some of my minster pictures on facebook because there are way too many for a few blog entries. Especially since today I went to the Jorvik Viking Centre and did the full Minster extravaganza- the Minster proper with guided tour, the Museum/Crypt/Treasury, AND the Tower, which required climbing up 275 uneven stone steps in a super narrow spiral staircase. Whew. But the view was totally worth it. But I'll save all that for the next entry. :)