Day 3: London to Leeds

Day three was a very long one which covered over 200 miles (322kms!).

We left only 10 minutes late, which was pretty awesome and the breakfast room opened a half hour early today to accommodate the tour, which was nice.  We left London and headed for Anne Hathaway's Cottage, just outside of Stratford Upon Avon (she was Shakespeare's wife if you didn't know). The bus did a bathroom stop en route and I was beyond thrilled - the toilets were free (I've spent a pound on bathrooms so far) and it had a Starbucks!!!! LOL. You should see all the cool pastries that the Starbucks here sells. It's really not fair.

Anyhow, once at Ms. Hathaway's cottage, the entire tour posed for a group photo with the cottage in the background. It's a very beautiful spot.

After a brief photo op, it was off to Stratford. 

Those who know me well know that I'm a bit of a Shakespeare geek. I love his plays. So I was geeking out a bit to be inside the same home that he'd been born and raised in and even briefly lived in after marrying Anne. It was awesome. I love it. The floors were all slanted and warped but gorgeous to me. There were actors outside that would do lines for you and I got one lady to do the closing of A Mid Summer Night's Dream for me - my favourite play. It was fantastic. 

We had enough time to check out a few shops (clotted cream fudge anyone?) and grab lunch (Subway!) and back on the bus as we headed to York. 

York is a very old city, originally settled by the Romans (71 AD) and then taken over by the Vikings. It was a walled city and a good deal of the wall remains today. We did a walking tour which ended at the very beautiful and very old York Minster (it's a church). After the tour, Dad and I ventured down the block and after I located a washroom and paid for the privilege to pee (while the poor lady running the washrooms was trying to get a man to come out so she could close up!) we climbed the stone steps and ventured out onto the wall. It was pretty cool.

Back to the Church. The first records have a church on the site back in 627. That's old. After being destroyed a couple times, it was rebuilt in 1220 in the Gothic style and that's what stands today. Apparently it avoided being bombed during the World Wars because the enemy used it as a landmark to guide them.  Makes sense to me.

We wandered back to find mom (who'd managed not to go into the chocolate shop while we were gone) and we toured around King's Square for a bit before sitting to rest. The entire group met up again at 6pm and we headed offer for supper. I had a fairly traditional dinner. I had Ham Terrine as the starter, roast pork with Yorkshire pudding, gravy, potatoes and carrots for dinner and sticky toffee pudding with ice cream for dessert (for the record, the sticky toffee pudding at the Cheshire Cat in Carp is better than this one).  Mom had a chicken and ham pot pie and dad had a ham steak with peas and chips.

Apparently, York is very haunted and seems to be a good place to have a bachlorette party. There was no less than 4 "haunted" tours or "ghost walks" and we counted 5 different bachlorette groups wandering about. 

We got to our hotel in Leeds a little after 9pm. In a 20 minute span, I had two conversations with two different drunk men. The first asked if we were from around here as they were looking for a good place to go drinking/partying. The second was in the "lift" and when he found out we were Canadian, he asked to borrow our Prime Minister. LOL

Thankfully, we're not leaving until 8:30 tomorrow so I can sleep in a bit. We're off to Durham first tomorrow, we'll see Hadrian's Wall, stop at an Abby and end up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Sounds like another busy day.

Bed time!

Good night,

Sarah
XOXO