La Fiesta, Snow and York

On the Saturday, I was due to go to York for a day trip run by the Uni. The night before, I knew that there was an Exchange party going on at a club in the city, but I wasn't sure if I'd end up going. Turns out, a large chunk of the internationals were going, so I tagged along too. We went to Teemu and Toby's house for a bit of a pregame first, where we had also arranged to meet Elizabeth and her friend from London, Amanda. They got to Teemu's right when we were leaving, and we ended up getting to the club at about half past 10 - we'd heard there was a line, but we just walked straight in. They were giving out stickers of flags at the front door - I grabbed an Australia one, but not long after, they ran out, so Fiona ended up with an Argentinian one. When we got to the main dancefloor, there weren't many people there, but there was already a massive queue for the coat check (and a two pound charge for it, as well). I decided to take a gamble, and put my coat on top of the speakers along with Shane's, Fiona's, Adam's, Allen's and a few others.

We went and got a couple of drinks, then sat down for a while. After a relatively short time, the club started to fill up. And then it got packed. I went back and found my friends on the dancefloor, and realised that there were a LOT of people on that dancefloor. And the room really wasn't that big. It ended up getting totally full and really hot, and the drinks really weren't that cheap, so we headed home just after 1am. My favourite part of the night was when they played "Jai Ho!", because the club went nuts! Everyone just seemed to get into it, it was awesome. They also played Ricky Martin, and I'm pretty sure that's the first time I'd ever heard him played in a club.

The next morning, I'd set my alarm for 7am. When it went off, I was a bit confused because we didn't have to be at the bus until 9.00, but then I remembered that the BBC had forecasted snow... and wouldn't you know, it was actually snowing!! And settling on the ground!! I'd never seen it do that before. I know it's snowed in Canberra a couple of times, but every time I've seen it, it's melted before it started settling. But this was awesome! I looked at it for about half an hour before getting ready to go out. I wore a bunch of layers because snow is cold, right? I was so excited. It was really beautiful. All of the Australians loved it actually, because none of us get it at home, but all the other people were complaining that it was wet and slushy. Which it was, but we didn't have anything to compare it to! We walked to the bus, and I nearly stacked it a couple of times but managed to keep my footing.

I stayed awake for most of the bus trip to York (which is only about an hour and a half away) because it had snowed a lot of the way towards there. Teemu and Felix both cracked open a beer on the way (even though it was 9am), and we were all sitting pretty close together, so there was plenty of entertainment. When we got to York, it was caught halfway between snowing and raining, and freezing cold, but still awesome. The reason we were in York was because the UK's biggest Viking festival was beginning that day... none of us really knew what to expect, but thought that we'd get to see the city and then run around like vikings, wearing funny hats and drinking mead from a horn for a while. We walked up to the centre of town, all admiring how pretty and English it was. We were all fairly hungry, so we went in search of somewhere to eat. We found a place called "Betty's Tea House", but it was really full so we decided to look elsewhere. It was around this time that a bunch of the others decided to buy umbrellas, because although the rain wasn't heavy, it was pretty constant and annoying. One of the sports shops was selling these huge umbrellas for 2.50, and when we all had our brollies up we looked hilarious. It's one way to not lose anyone!!

It turned out that the Viking festival had more happening on the Sunday. That was a bit of a bust. We only ran into one Viking, and he was wearing pink, so I'm not entirely sure on the historical accuracy. We decided to take the opportunity to explore York though, and see if we could find any more Vikings hiding around the city.

We went for a bit of a walk, heading vaguely towards York Minster Cathedral, which is really hard to miss and pretty much the centre of the city. When we were walking, we found an armoury (and promptly lost Massi and Akash to it for a while) then we found a smaller version of the tea shop across the road. We decided to see if we could get a table. At first it seemed like the place was too small, but the people working there managed to push a couple of tables together and we all got to sit in a corner together, and we ordered an assortment of cinnamon toast, scones, hot chocolate, tea and Allen's frog cake (that is, a cake in the shape of a frog. Not a cake made out of frogs - I don't think that would taste very nice!). We eventually left the tea shop, in search of "old stuff". First point of call was the Cathedral. We went inside the first part, but I didn't want to pay the 8.00 admission fee, so I just admired it from a distance. We then headed off back towards the city walls, where we all did our touristy thing and took a bunch of photos first from the outside, then from the inside of the gate house.

We then decided to walk up to one of the museums, where we found a part of a really old building that had what looked like sarcophagi in it - so Vanessa and I took the opportunity to pose:

Lovely, huh? We then walked over towards the museum itself, but didn't go in (due to another exorbitant entry fee), but we did see the ruins of another church with a cemetery (which I unfortunately didn't get to explore due to a fence). We took a turn around the park, which was really pretty and green, and then found this old, Tudor-style house that is now used for wedding venues. A really nice man offered to take a photo of us all on the stairs, which I thought turned out really well.

From there, we continued to walk around the park, where we saw squirrels!! I really like squirrels. Even though I know that they're wild animals and probably a pest, they're so cute. Not like possums, which are just nasty. Squirrels are so adorable with their tails and the way they run. After playing with the squirrels for a while, we headed back over towards the train station, and then on to the train museum, where we'd heard the Hogwarts Express was in town. We got there, and there were heaps of people (some of them in costume), including Dumbledore and Hagrid! I was so excited. We waited our turn in line with a bunch of six year olds for a photo with them, and they seemed pretty interested that we'd all travelled from around the world. We somehow managed to lose Fiona and Allen around this time, but we then saw the Hogwarts Express, and so exploited another photo opportunity. It was the actual train from the movies - I was so excited!!

From there, we headed back into town and headed over to the castle. I use the term 'castle' loosely. I knew what to expect, because when I worked at The Elms, I went on an excursion with the Year 5's to the Castle Museum, but the others were fair disappointed. Mostly all that's left is a watchtower from the 13th Century... although that's still pretty cool. From there we wandered back into the city centre and found a Gregg's for afternoon tea. We considered going to the York Dungeon, but that had a massive line and looked to just be a franchised rip-off version of the London Dungeon. We decided to head over to the Viking museum to see if there was more of the festival there, but there really wasn't. I then went for a walk with Cory and Amanda to see more of the town. We stopped and got crepes from a van - Amanda and I got cheese and tomato, and Cory got a chocolate one (that smelled absolutely delightful!). We managed to find another really old church and some cool-looking stores, before beginning to wander back to the bus.

We were amongst the first back, and managed to grab a bunch of seats up the back of the bus (like the cool kids we are). It wasn't long before we were joined by Teemu, Felix and Sam, and then Allen, Fiona, Adam, Annemarie, Vanessa and Kathy, with a couple of the others on the other bus. We were all exhausted, and Felix commented we all must be getting old, because when he was at school, the bus trip was the best part of any excursion. I agreed, then promptly nodded off to sleep like the old person I am.

When we got back to Sheffield, we discovered that there was still a bit of snow on the ground! Adam and Allen had a bit of a snowball fight, while Amanda and I made a tiny snowman (that was either called Frosty or Snowy, depending on who you asked), and then Amanda made a snow angel. It was a really fun ending to what was a truly awesome day!!