York!

So I get off the station, and Manasi tells me to turn left "and head towards the York Minster" which can be seen from every part of the city. Now I was already quite excited about seeing everything, but nothing could have prepared me for how imposing the York Minster would actually turn out to be - except for the strains of classical music that hung in the air on the way - and in the park just by the minster, a band was playing. It was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures can't do justice to my first impression of the city, but here they are anyway:

Right so now it's time to explore a bit - just next to the minster is the market - its full of crowded little roads, full of tearooms which the city is famous for. Mostly, they look like this -

And they're full of the strangest shops (one sweet shop where i bought a bag of some boiled sweets and demolished them in 36 hours flat) and then, there's the shop of, well, miscellaneous items, i suppose - and the most brilliant chess sets. Note the price tags. That's right, I'm never going to OWN one.

Zimbabwean dancers performing on the street. Not too sure what thats all about, to be honest:

Right, so the river Ouse runs through york, so this is a picture i took across it. Note the ray of sunshine i have captured so brilliantly on my beautiful K850i (these are all phone-cam pics, btw). Following that, some ruins of something (i don't quite remember what. pretty, tho)

Right, so York, which was once the capital of the Northern province of England (source: wiki) was taken over by William the Conqueror, and he set up the city walls to protect the city(source: Manasi Subramanian). Walking along those is brilliant. Here goes:

Okay so these are the archaic buildings in york - but guess what, some of the everyday buildings dont look all that different either..

A sandwich bar, left, and finally, a PUB, right!

So this is the view from Manasi's room. How unfair is that???? (All I have in Sheffield is a fucking skylight, where the occasional passing cloud is about as exciting as it gets)

The university is stunning. The ponds in the area are full of ducks - apparently the university has the highest duck to student ratio in england (again the source is manasi) and this might seem a dubious distinction, but really, there's something awfully cute about the ducks. Apparently they get quite happy when there are people around. Soon after a took the first picture below (left) the lot of them came by to investigate...

Ducks are not the only friendly fauna around - we encountered a couple of horses in a field - and they suddenly decided to amble up to us. I guess we could have done many things in that situation but we chose to retreat to the safety of a (fenced) neighbouring field.

On the otherside of that fence, a cemetery i think for professors in the university and the like.

And finally, from the train station, you can see this giant ferris wheel, which manasi says is called the eye or something because you can see the whole city from the top. i clicked dutifully, but my heart wasn't in it. i was heartbroken.

i was leaving york.