[Harlaxton ’11] Trains, Regal Garments, and Sunday Lunch Mark Visit to York

by Aaron Stolze

Our trip began today with something many of us were really looking forward to, a train ride across the English countryside.  Since many of us had never rode a train before we were eagerly awaiting the experience.  It was cool to say that I’ve been on a train before but it definitely isn’t the way that I would do most of my traveling.

After a decent train ride, we had finally found ourselves in the city of York.  We were greeted with a skyline view of our first stop, the York Minister, the one of the largest gothic cathedrals in northern Europe.  Walking through the halls really brought you back to when the place was first built.  Especially down in the crypts of the Minister.  Plenty of artifacts could be seen, it really gave made you appreciate just how great these people must have been if there history could still be seen today.

After we had spent some time at the Minister, we took a little stroll to Clifford’s Tower, the city’s local castle.  It gave us a beautiful view of the city but what most of us enjoyed the most about was playing dress-up.  It was too tempting to put on some medieval clothing and pretend to be royalty and snap a few pics in the throne.

Once our castle visit, the group began to split up as it was our time to explore York for ourselves.  There were far too many shops for us to visit them all so we did our best to only hit up the best ones we could find.  Much to our delight, Will Bickett and I had found what we had spent all our time in England looking for, top hats.  We decided to mull over our decision a little longer over an early dinner but this would prove to be our downfall.  Walking around the corner we met found Corey who brought us the news that York was basically shutting down for the night right at 5.  We hurried over to the hat store but were too late.  Since all of the shops were closed, there wasn’t much to do until our departure in two hours so we walked around for a little more until we decided to end the night with a quick bite to eat on the riverside before we needed to head back to Harlaxton to prepare for our next trip to the Lake District.