York and Leeds Take 2

Saturday morning, after working a night shift, I hopped on a bus to Leeds and met up with Charlotte, James, Lauren and Emily who had come up to Leeds to visit some friends. We headed off directly to York, which was all covered in christmas lights. It felt very cozy. That's the York Minstrel in the background.

This is the crew that went...Rob, Ross, Jamie, Lauren, Emily, James and Charlotte. I played the tourist and broke out my camera every five minutes.

We mostly wandered around the pedestrian shopping streets and enjoyed the general splendor of the city. We did spent about 45 minutes trying to get everyone to decide on where to eat, that is the only problem with sight seeing in large groups.

We learned that at the York Minster there would be a choral evensong service that night, so we decided to pop in and enjoy that. It was about an hour service with a choir singing and readings of the bible. The organ and the choir sounded really incredible in that old building with such amazing accoustics. The best thing was that we got to all stand and sing "Abide with Me" with the choir and organ. So fantastic! I am going to have to go to one again at christmas time.

The other great thing is that we got to look around the church for free when they usually charge an admission fee. Also, I have never seen the inside of a cathedral at night, it changed the feeling significantly.

After the evensong we wandeder around a part of town called "the Shambles" which are these skinny little medieval streets lined with little shops and restaurants. They were all decorated with christmas things as well.

That evening we had a chill night. We stayed at Rob and Jamies house so we headed back there with some icecream and chatted and watche a movie. It's always entertaining to be with good friends.

Sunday we went to church then Lauren and I made a yummy spagetti dinner for us all. At dinner something kind of funny happened. We were all talking about different sports and Lauren was talking about how her and her sisters have influenced a lot what her brother does and she said, "All us girls made him camp" To which I said, very naturally, "I love camping" - to which everyone to my suprise busted up laughing. When they all caught their breath and calmed down they explained to me that "camp" means feminine.....well why do you need to say camp! Can't you just say feminine. So I am slowly catching on to all the English-isms.

We hung around and rested for a little while longer and then James, Charlotte, Emily, Lauren and I all crammed into Lauren's little fiesta for the 4 hour drive home. We got pretty cozy back there.

When we got close to home on the motorway, this car full of boys passed us, so naturally we started car flirting and just being silly since we were bored after so long in the car. Then Lauren says jokingly, "Emily, you should flash them" To which Emily has a stroke of brilliance in that she was wearing two shirts. So at one point when they overtook us, this was what they got. We all got a good laugh out of that.

It was a lot of traveling for a little over twenty four hours, but it was totally worth being with good friends.