York

So, I realize I've been terrible and haven't posted since our first couple days here. I'm just going to cover our time in York in this post and then I'll cover the rest in more. Once again, I'm sorry for the delay.

York:
My cousin David arranged a couple days in York for us. His mum, Aunt Margaret, picked us up in the morning and took us to meet him at the train station. We took the train to York, making several changes at Cambridge, Ely, and Peterborough. When we arrived, we hiked the couple kilometers to the hotel. The hotel, which he had also arranged, was amazing. Not only did it have an amazing breakfast each morning (free of charge) but the appliances in the rooms were really great. I think I might even buy one of the ipod docks.
We decided to make the York Minster our first stop. This has really been a trip full of churches. After having seen the churches at Lavenham, Bury St. Ed's, and Thaxted, the Minster was a must see. Not only was the church itself amazing, but it's tower (a whopping 275 steps above the ground) offered an amazing view of York. We then took a trip down to the crypt where lie the remains of both the original 1100 Saxon church which was built there (hence why it is called a "minster") as well as the Roman ruins which date back to about 300. In fact, Constantine was in York when the current emperor died and he was named emperor in 306, although it took him until 310 to solidify his rule against his rivals.
We topped off the night with a ghost walk which left from the King's Arms pub. Apparently, this pub, which is right down next to the water, floods all the time! The walk took us all around York from Clifford's tower to the Shambles and back. Finishing off with a pint, we headed back to the hotel.
The second day we set out to see everything. We did the Yorvik viking center to start, touring the site of the ancient viking city beneath the streets of York itself! The street names were even the same! The Viking "Coppregatte" or "Cup Maker" steet is the modern day "Coppergate". From there, we headed over to the York dungeon, facing down the black death, Guy Fawkes and even Dick Turpin, the famous highway man who was hanged in York for stealing the horse "Black Bess". Afterwards, we hightailed it over to the Castle Museum where we experienced the streets of york as they would have been in victorian times, and in the 60's. We also wandered through exhibits in what used to be the jail! I tried to lock Gwen in but she escaped... :-P
We stopped in at Clifford tower for another view of York. I nearly tripped over my own feet playing hopscotch with the rocks on the top walkway. At that point, we were really tired and decided to go back to the hotel to regroup before dinner. Dinner was at this amazing Italian restaurant. The food was so good that I couldn't finish my chocolate cake dessert.
We woke up early the next day (Saturday) and hopped the train back to Audley End. However, there was no rest for the weary as that night was the Strange's Burn's Night celebration. Burn's Night is a gathering held to honor the Scottish poet Robert Burns. The tradition centers around hagis, a scottish delicacy which involves some sort of meat stuffed inside a lamb's stomach and cooked. The hagis is brought in, traditionally to bag pipe music, and then a poem (usually Burns' "Ode to The Hagis") is read. The ladies may also be addressed and then everyone takes a shot of whiskey, and the hagis is stabbed before being served. I had the honor of stabbing it. We Americans acquitted ourselves quite well. We began with the champagne, moved on to pink champagne, finished our whiskey and ended the night with both red and white wine. By the end of the night we were both exhausted and slightly tipsy.

This brings us up to our second Sunday. We pretty much lazed around, with the exception of Claudia and myself who went to the barn for a ride on Polly. I will leave the tales of this last week to another post as they include more fun and, oddly enough, more churches. Once again, I apologize for the delay in posts, we've just been so busy and enjoying ourselves so much! Our hosts have all been amazing!