A Hodge-Podge of Recent(ish) Happenings

First up, I have a special gem to share. I'd meant to post this photo with the Eddie Izzard entry, since that's when I made the discovery of it's existence but somehow forgot to include it. Check out what lives in Exhibition Square (i.e. the area comprised of King's Manor and the York Art Museum) late at night. I don't actually know how often or when it gets there because I've never seen it before or since, but then again, we got back from the train at like 12:30 am the day we saw the comedy show and I'm never out that late, so it could be there all the time and I just don't know. I suppose its like Schrodinger's cat. And yes, I'm aware of how dorky it is to reference that in conversation, but dorky is the new cool! Accept it! :)

Without further ado, check out the Baked Potato Waggon!

It is actually a bit strange, because they usually call baked potatoes "jacket potatoes" here. And they're pretty ubiquitous as lunch options at various sandwich shops/cafes with a variety of filling options. I had one the other day for lunch with "mince" filling; ground beef and peas in some kind of sauce stuff. It wasn't bad. I would kill for a potato with plain old chili and cheddar cheese though. I'm ok with the mince stuff too, but I'm sorry, various forms of curry on a potato just doesn't appeal to me.

You may have noticed that I talk about food a lot. Food is always what gets me first in a foreign country. I like what I like and I miss what I like. And I'm afraid I'm not done with food for this entry yet :)

Last Sunday (wow have I been bad about updating...) I went with a couple other girls to experience a traditional Sunday Roast. Its kind of a tradition here that people go to church and then either go to a pub (or enjoy at home) roast beef with all the trimmings. We attempted one pub that came highly recommended, but everyone else in York apparently also heard that recommendation, so we went to a less crowded pub which was also recommended called the Evil Eye.

Here is what 7 pounds will get you on Sunday afternoons:

Even I don't know what all is on that plate. There's roast beef, cabbage mush, what I think were about 3 different kinds of potatoes, broccoli, carrots, some kind of squash mash, and Yorkshire pudding. The "Yorkie" is a bread that's cooked using the fat droppings from the roast. That's the thing on top that's a bit dark around the edges. Its not bad, but it kind of just tastes like meaty bread. Underneath the Yorkie was something that vaguely resembled what I can only describe as stuffing pureed into baby food (ick.) And of course, gravy over everything. As you may or may not be aware, I have this thing about not liking my food touching, and for exactly this reason. I don't like my gravy getting all over stuff it shouldn't. Case in point, I do not care for gravy on broccoli or carrots. And I don't like cabbage mush to begin with, but certainly not with gravy on it. Gravy belongs on potatoes and meat and that's all. Aside from the kind of weird mushed up stuff, it wasn't bad. Well, ok, the potatoes, meat, and Yorkie were pretty good. I don't know that I'll be ordering another one anytime soon.

Afterwards, we trekked about three doors up the street to Starbucks, where I enjoyed a delicious chai latte. They actually have different flavors here, which is probably to be expected. There's a dark chocolate cherry mocha that is apparently delicious that I'm going to have to try next time I convince myself that I can spend like 3.50 ($5!!) on a small drink. We were pleased to see that UK Starbucks sell proper scones, not those silly little lemon things that the US stores sell. 

And now for something not food related! I'm taking you on a walk with me to the Rougier Street bus stop (where I then caught the bus to campus to spend a few hours at the library.) So from my house, I walk down the street and then cut through some teeny tiny streets and end up walking along the Ouse River, which is pronounced like "ooze."

The Ouse is actually one of 2 rivers running through York, the other being the Foss. These were of course the reason York was historically a major center in England because both rivers are pretty large and allow for shipping access. Later York became a railway hub, continuing its history as transportation center for the North of England. The leaves have only been falling the last 2 weeks or so; temperatures are still ridiculously mild here, considering I'm basically as far north as Alaska. Yay Gulf Stream. We're hovering around 50 degrees during the day, so I'm still just wearing a corduroy jacket (totally the best thing I bought to come here) or a light sweater and a scarf. It does get colder at night though. And night here is basically anytime after 4:30 in the afternoon. It is full dark by then when I get out of class, which is really weird. Because as a girl and living in a city for the last few years, I've had it drilled in to me to be super cautious at night, not to go anywhere alone, etc etc etc, but that just feels silly when its dark in the late afternoon!

Anyway, back to our stroll. Here is Lendal Bridge, which connects a tower on one side (all that remains of the city walls there; also on the market if anyone wants to buy a medieval tower. It is attached to a modern house if that's a concern!) and the city walls on the other.

You can see bright red boats past the bridge. Those are the York Boats, which is on my list of things to do if anyone ever comes to visit me. No one here seems interested. :( 

Here's a little sandwich shop that I've been meaning to try, mostly because I think the building is really cute. I'm a sucker for anything with crenelations. Vocab word- crenelations or battlements are the technical terms for the top part of castles that go up and down sort of like this:

 _    _    _

|   |_|  |_|   | (sorry, that's the best I can do). They allow for arrows to be shot while offering some protection for the archer's body. You can also see the shields on the bridge to the left. I think its pretty nifty.

Finally, here's a shot of the city walls running off towards the train station located just outside the walls.

From here I cross the street, walk past a neon green sandwich shop called Krunchy's which I also kind of want to try (are you sensing a pattern? Lots of sandwich shops) and arrive at the bus stop and await the giant purple monstrosity that services the University route.

So there you have it. More or less an average day in my life, minus the boring library bits. :)

Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, oh my!

Ok, first of all, I must start this entry with perhaps the best things ever: Custard Creams. Now, you might be thinking, gee, those are just cookies. Whoop-di-doo. You would be wrong on two counts. 1) These are "biscuits." For a fun (read, frustrating) time, try to explain American southern-style biscuits to a Brit. Here biscuits are sandwich cookies. Something like a chocolate chip cookie would be considered a "cookie." 2) These are delicious. Biscuits are often eaten with tea, and this is really the best way to enjoy them. Yum. :D

Ok, now that I'm done gushing about the fact that I found custard creams in England, let us move on to what I've been up to the for the past few days. I went with a couple of my housemates to the Jorvik Viking Centre. Now, to get an idea of what this entailed, imagine the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World if you've ever been on it. For those of you who haven't, they stick you on a moving boat thing and you ride through various scenes filled with moving animatronic pirates. Got that picture in your head? Now picture the pirates with matty blonde/red hair dressed as Vikings and positioned in a scene of York in the year 876. Now add the smells of excrement, livestock, fish, and ironworking. That's pretty much the Jorvik Viking Centre in a nutshell. Of course, they also have some more traditional museum-y type exhibits once you get off the ride. Now, while it was probably fairly authentic, I could have done without the man in the "privy" (read, hole surrounded by a chest-height fence) moaning and emitting foul odors. But maybe that's just me...

Moving on! Then we did the whole Minster kit and caboodle. A "Do Everything" Pass will allow you to wander around the minster proper and join a tour if you wish, visit the Museum/Crypt/Treasury located in the foundations of the Minster, and climb the 275 uneven stone steps up a tight spiral staircase to the top of the Tower. Of course, we found out on our way out that we could have gotten in for free with our U. of York cards. Oh well. Here's Constantine the Great (who was proclaimed Augustus at the site of York Minster) looking slightly less dignified than usual. Opposite him is a Roman column.

The column comes from directly under the Minster, which, incidentally, is the 5th incarnation of a minster church on the site. During the Roman period, the Roman fortress was located almost exactly where the Minster now stands (About a quarter of the Roman fortress is under the Minster's foundations). During repair work of the Minster foundations in the 60's, the Roman remains, including this column were discovered. Some of the original walls and some artifacts are now displayed in the Minster basement in the Museum. The column was re-erected on the Minster plaza. Good intentions, however, went awry. The column is actually standing upside down. Oops!

Anyway, back to adventures at the Minster, which is quickly becoming my favorite building ever. If you climbe 275 of these:

 you get to the top of the tower where you can see this! PS if the picture looks weird, its because I took it on the way down, not up :)

If you look just to the right of the tower on the left, you can just make out the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. I'm sparring you the close up photo I took in an attempt to not overwhelm this page with pictures.

You can also see these guys. Aren't they cute? :)

I'll put up a whole album of Minster pictures because I've got way too many to share here. Anyway, later that afternoon, we discovered the absolutely deliciousness of a strangely British (and apparently Canadian) food: fries (or chips here) covered with gravy and cheese. Sounds disgusting. I know. But so good. So good. Mmm.

Today, I went on one of the free walking tours of York offered by the York Association of Voluntary Guides. Our tour guide was a really cute older British lady. She took us around some of the Roman and Medieval sights, including the Museum Gardens. While I'd been in there, it was nice to hear some of the history not recorded on plaques or anything around the Gardens. For example, this is the Multiangular Tower, the most complete Roman tower standing. The city also placed several Roman caskets inside, which were discovered during the construction of a hotel elsewhere in the city. Here's a view from the outside that should show why it was named as it was.















We also saw an Anglo-Saxon tower built on top of older Roman walls, and took a walk along the medieval/Roman wall from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar.

Along the way, you get a nice view of the Treasurer's House, the Minster, and the Archbishop's House. From there we saw some of the city, including the oldest block of houses in the country. We ended up at the Shambles, the oldest medieval street preserved in the city. It was named because it used to be the butchers quarter, and the shops still have the meat hooks along the top of the shop windows. In Anglo-Saxon, "fleshammels" meant the street of the butchers. Today it and the surrounding area is fun to poke around, and has a hay market with fresh produce & cheap clothes to peruse.

Aside from poking around the city, I went to International Student Orientation yesterday. It was mostly a lot of pointless blathering by various people from various offices ("Hey, do you need to improve your English? Take our ESL classes!" "Plagarisim is bad!" etc.), but I did accomplish pretty much everything I will ever need to do on campus, so that was good. The school scanned my passport & visa so now the government won't come after me for coming into the country as a student and not showing up at school. I registered with the student health centre. I also got an introduction for banking privileges letter, took said letter to a booth set up by my chosen bank (the only one that DOESN'T charge between 5 and 10 pounds per month for the privilege of having a bank account) and opened up an account. I also got my very own University of York student card, so now I can start taking advantage of student specials. Woo!

Meanwhile, I've been brushing up on my Latin skills. Next week we have induction for the Centre for Medieval Studies and language placement tests, so I want to be able to remember SOMETHING about Latin :)

In US news, I'm completely upset that the Red Sox have gotten their butts handed to them by the Angels in games 1 & 2 of the ALDS. This is not acceptable. Dear Sox, please play better. Thank you.

I'll end this VERY long entry with a photo from that market I mentioned, must because I like it and I don't want to end with a rage about the Red Sox inability to hit a baseball.

P.S. Comments are totally welcome. Just sayin'. Especially if you spell like an American!

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. :)