To York!

Today was the first day of a long weekend- we get Saturday through Monday off! I was going to go to Scotland with a group but it ended up being too expensive, so Leslie and Jesse and I stayed in London. And I must say, we had a marvelous time. We took the train to York and went exploring.

First off, when we got to the train station, we found Platform 9 and 3/4! Actually they do have the legitimate, Harry Potter, Platform 9 and 3/4 but that area of the train station was under construction. This one was still sweet, though.And it really does say 3/4 but the 4 is worn away so it's hard to see in this picture.

We didn't have any particular plan when we got there so we just started walking. First we saw this awesome medieval wall that surrounds the town. As we kept going we discovered that there are a lot of historical buildings here. We went through the park and found this cool structure that used to be St. Mary's Abby. And this will sound crazy, but the park smelled like brownies! We walked through it a couple times throughout the day and it always had that smell.

We went window shopping down the narrow streets and found a few cool things- this group of street performers that reminded me of the band in Mary Poppins, this sweet looking vintage ice cream "truck", a cheap pastry shop (unfortunately, both inexpensive and cheap, as it were) this cool midieval tower on a hill that looked like a castle, a couple museums...

I think the highlight of the day was the City Art Gallery. We happened upon it and got in for free- it was a small gallery of paintings, sculptures, and pottery. My favorite room was filled with work by Austin Wright. He worked with several different media- drawings, sculpture, collage... He has an abstract style and focuses a lot on space. Many of his pieces in the exhibit showed different relationships through proximity. Jesse and I liked his stuff so much that we did a couple sketches of his sculptures.

After our lovely exploration of York, took the train back into London. We stopped by the grocery store then got back home for a late dinner.

I feel so proud of us for adventuring in England all by ourselves. And we didn't run into any trouble! And it was fun! Yep it was a good day. :)