North Trip!

If I could use three words to describe the North trip, they would be as follows: Bus, cold, and wet. Oh yeah... and AMAZZZZING!
Day one: We enjoyed a nice bus ride, and took a lovely stop at Chatsworth house on the way. Also to be known as Pemberly in the new Pride and Prejudice, this house was one of my favorite palace-manor house-mansions (whatever you want to call it) yet. They used a lot of wood carvings for the walls and pillars, which is unique to the other palaces I've seen. I loved it. There was a sweet library, and the gardens were really really pretty.


We then proceeded to drive further North, and ended up in Haworth which is where the Bronte family lived. After being there for a while, I now know why both of the Bronte books I've read (Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights) are so dark. It was super foggy, and their house was right by an old parish church, and their whole yard was graves. Their house was basically in a graveyard. They told us there was about 2000 people buried there. No wonder they write about sad storys and ghosts and stuff.
But it was fun being in their house where they grew up. They wrote most of their great works in that very house.

On the bus ride after that, we watched Pride and Prejudice, and I realized that we've visited like every filming sight in that movie. Maybe I should join the fan club and invent a scavenger hunt.
Then we arrived in York, where me and my cool friends decided we'd go pubbing (since the clubbing rule STILL applies in the North. Lame I know.), and then we said goodnight to each other.... in York.
p.s. Did I mention that it rained all day?

Day 2: Woke up and headed to York Minster. We got there by way of the Great Wall of York (ok, I made that up. I can't remember the real name), which is the wall they built around the city of York to protect them from bad guys.York Minster is a grand cathedral, one of my favorites, but wait- I say that every time don't I? We had a really good tour through the Cathedral. One of my favorite things about this one was the windows, especially the West window with a heart. Never seen that before.

Then, we hopped back on the coach (still raining, just fyi) and drove to Fountain Abbey, which is the ruins of a Cathedral- Thanks again to Henry. I love Cathedrals, and I love ruined ones too. I didn't love fountain abbey as much as Tintern Abbey, but they were both really cool, and it was fun to be there in the rain. I wish you could all experience what it is really like to see Cathedral ruins vicariously through my pictures, but alas it is just something you have to witness for yourself. Put it on your bucket list.

After Fountain Abbey we drove to the city of Durham as the amount of rain seemed to increase with every mile. Then to top it off when we arrived, the teachers told us we could walk up to the castle (did I mention we were going to sleep in a castle? Here's a picture...) or wait in the rain for a shuttle for 20 minutes. Some of us decided we'd rather be walking in the rain than standing, so we hauled our luggage up the hill towards Durham Castle, and after about 7 minutes, the shuttle passed us and we got to see the other students laughing at us through the windows.

We all got our room numbers, and we were all settled most of us headed over to the Cathedral to hear Evensong. First of all, the Cathedral is fantastic. It was SO unique to the others I've seen, the pillars have really cool designs on them, and the stained glass had SUCH pretty colors. I was so sad they didn't allow pictures. For Evensong they let us sit up in the East end of the Cathedral with the choir, so it was a really neat experience. The singing was beautiful, and listeing to the beautiful singing in the beautiful cathedral was something I won't soon forget.

Bed time comes, and it turns out they had some confusion with rooming, so I ended up alone in a room- that was wierd. All alone. For the first time in months. My room had a SWEET view of Durham Cathedral from the window, and I only had to hide under my covers for about 5 minutes while I fell asleep in my solitary room, all alone, by myself, with no one else there.

To be continued