the coastal town that they forgot to close down

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first i want to preface this by saying that i am bored out of my mind. its nasty out, i have a lot of homework, and i'm trying to save my money for a really awesome spring break, so i haven't left york in over a month. there's not a lot to do here. i'm going crazy.

and onto the snow. so, when corbin was still here we decided to take a trip to the coast. i've been wanting to go to whitby, which is a coastal town a little north of scarborough. its got a really neat pile of protestant reformation era ruins, and it was also the inspiration for Dracula by bram stoker and the carpenter and the walrus by lewis carroll. And, corbin needed to try some fish and chips, and there's no where better to get fish and chips than from a coastal town.

well, our first attempt to go to whitby totally failed. i guess i turned my alarm off in my sleep b/c i woke up a few hours after the bus had come and gone. this turned out to be a fortuitous mistake, though. you see, we had to postpone our trip to the next day, and as you are probably guessing, it snowed that day! i woke up before dawn to make sure we got to the bus stop on time, and when i looked out the window into the quickly fading darkness i was like "huh, sure does look awfully white out there--maybe my eyes are working properly yet." so i rubbed my eyes, the white was still there, and i was like "AHHH! SNOW!" and not snow like the fake stuff julia and i had encountered in scarborough or the crappy impure snow in austria. oh no. this was pretty new snow.

so we ended up playing around in the snow in york for an hour or two, which was really fun. town looked really pretty covered in white, as you see. i want to put out there that while we were walking around enjoying the snow, corbin happened to notice that we were walking near a big puddle and that a car was about to drive through the puddle and probably splash us. seeing that i hadn't noticed these things, does he say, "sarah, look out!". nope. he says nothing at all to me and runs out of the way, leaving me to get covered in grey slush. geez, so manly of him, huh?

i have also included random pictures of campus taken over xmas break to this entry, even though there is no snow involved.

moving along, the drive to whitby was one of the best parts of the excursion. i was kinda nervous when we got on the bus b/c it was still snowing and i didn't want to get stuck in whitby over night. also making these fears worse was the fact that the bus driver kindly told us that we were "mad" for going to whitby on a day like this. i didn't put much stock in his opinion, though, as he had claimed to not understand my accent when i asked if there was a student discount for the tickets (about the only time i haven't been understood) and i think he was probably just a cranky old man. i figured we would be driving on big interstate-like roads or at least highways, but no. at times we were driving down little one lane roads way out in the country. this made for BEAUTIFUL views of snow covered fields with sheep blending in with all the white, but it was scary to be sitting on the top of a double decker bus while driving down a totally slushed over country lane. it was even worse when we got to the moors and were driving along roads that were not only really slushy but super curvy and hilly. i was scared, but we didn't die. also, i saw a THATCHED ROOF during this outing!!!

first order of business in whitby was getting some fish and chips. they were deep-fried and delicious, as always. Lord, I think i could live off of fish and chips if i didn't feel on the verge of death after consuming all that grease.

there's not a lot to see in whitby, but what there is is worth seeing, and it was especially nice to be hanging around in the setting that gave "birth" to dracula on such a moody day. there wasn't snow sticking to the ground in whitby as there was everywhere else in yorkshire, but the sky was heavy and grey and little dippin-dots shaped clumps of snow occasionally fell from the heavens. it definitely would have been in keeping if we had seen a vampire. we walked through the city center, which was filled with lots of souvenir shops and tea shops, and then headed out to the pierrs. the sea was a-raging and water was splashing up on the walkway. we were enjoying our proximity to all the scary waves when suddenly we were assaulted by a combination of gale-force winds and a fresh enslaught of snow. it felt as though God himself was slinging those dippin-dots at us, so we made a hasty retreat to the nearest shelter we could find, trying very hard to not get blown down by the super strong wind. let me add that it was REALLY COLD out (it was the very beginning of january).

we hid in an archway and waiting for the snow to die down, and then headed up a really big hill to check out the abbey that whitby is most famous for. first, though, we warmed up in the abbey gift shop (corbin and i both have a strong apperciation for gift shops) where i bought some fudge and a kitschy ruler for my friend rose. they charged an indecent amount for entrance to the ruins, so we just walked along the wall enclosing the ruins until we could see what all the fuss was about. the ruins were nice, but i would recommend that everybody just circumabulate the premises to get a free view rather than pay the admission charge. the views of the country side from around the abbey walls are really nice, too.

we headed back down the hill to the town to see what else there was to do as we still had like 3 hours to kill before our bus left. let me warn you guys, whitby, at least in the winter, is DEAD by 4 in the afternoon. and i mean DEAD. there were maybe two restaurants open, one bar, but all the pubs closed (what?!?). it was hella lame. so i got coffee in the bar, which bought us time to rest our weary feet and warm our cold bones. we figured we would move from the bar to subway, getting dinner there and sitting in the warmth until our bus arrived. but no. they close off the seating area in the whitby subway after 4. so we skipped dinner and just sat on a bench in the bus station in the cold and dark, waiting at least 1.5 hours for our bus to show up. that is, we were hoping it would show up. since it had been snowing all day in whitby, we weren't sure if the roads to york were passable by that time, putting us in a somewhat precarious situation.

the bus did show up, thankfully. on the bus ride home i tried desperately to get more glimpses of the beautiful moors, but it was dark out and the lights on the bus were on so i couldn't see anything. my attempts to focus on what i couldn't see, though, made me really carsick and i just about had to throw up in a souvenir bag. i pulled through, though.

we had to change buses in a little town called malton, where we met a couple of local kids. things must be pretty dull in malton, b/c these kids totally flipped out when they found out we were american. one girl even kissed corbin, she got so excited. then they asked us a bunch of questions like "do you have x-factor [ed.-the british equivalent of american idol] in america?".

so, whitby is nice for the day, but be prepared to be bored if you're there after four in the afternoon.


oh, and i went back to london for the second IFSA-butler london weekend. it was good fun. we ate at mestizo (an "authentic" mexican restaurant--its good, but its no taco bell or la huerta) again, had another night of good food and dancing on a river boat, and once again had brunch at one of the london hiltons. i also went to the national gallery (very good) and the national portrait gallery (good too).

oh yeah, and we had an earthquake the other day. it took me awhile to realize it was an earthquake. we have really strong winds here in york, and at first i thought the wind had gotten so bad that the building was being pushed over. and then i thought that maybe some kids upstairs were just jumping up and down really violently. but it was in fact an earthquake that registered as 5.3 on the richter scale. i think maybe a few people throughout the country were hurt, but as far as i know there was no damage on campus.

also, it is too bad that KIM HAWTHORNE is so busy being married that she won't leave me any more comments. damn you, sam demass (just kidding!...sorta...)

and congratulations to COURTNEY and TRAVIS on their recent marriage! woo wee!

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Photos

the river ouse
virginia woolf killed herself in this river. morbid but true.

Comments

[Megan]

BEAUTIFUL pictures Sarah! It's just so darn pretty. And I love your description of the snow as dippin dots that God was hurling at you.

[Michelle]

We missed you...
We missed you at Courtney and Travis's wedding yesterday. Don't worry...Kim may be too busy to comment, but I am still unmarried. Therefore, I have lots of time. (haha!)

[sarah]

hmmm
i wouldn't have minded seeing whitby abbey :)