Most of the sights in this trip were geared to people in the architecture class--while the professor led them on tours, the rest of us kind of just wandered around. Our first destination was Hardwick Hall, which is some massive house built in the 1590s? They had a huge garden outside, and we wandered around for a bit before entering. There was wormwood (absinthe?!) and menthol and a bunch of other herbs that I wish they had more information on. But maybe that's because I'm a bio major, and I don't really care about plants unless you tell me what they're used for, aside from eating. The focal point of the house was its medieval tapestries, but I'm not into that, so the house was pretty boring to me. Also, it was suuuuuuuper creepy. It was really dark inside, and there were hella weapons hung up on the wall, along with deer and moose skulls. It was like walking onto a set for some horror movie where the guests start dying from mysterious causes, one by one. Not cool.
Also, for some reason, each room smelled like some kind of food (maybe it's because we were really hungry by then, or because the kitchen was under the rooms?). The blue roomed smelled like bbq, and two other rooms smelled like chicken soup. The entrance smelled like LB broth derrrr.
Then we got back onto the bus to go to York Minster. That place is awesome, and I'll definitely be putting pictures of it up later. We also walked along the city walls, ate Cornish pasties (is it bad if I think this is one of the trip highlights?), went to a park and then returned to the hotel where I ate waaaaay too much for dinner. Also, side note, the English have more ways of cooking potatoes than I have ever thought of. Fried, boiled, broiled, etc. Maybe that's why Tolkien's hobbits were eating them on the way to Sauron.
The second day was a lot better. First of all, everyone was excited that there was actual breakfast. I haven't had waffles in forever! So delish. We went to Castle Howard (Andrew: not another house...), which is where the film Brideshead Revisited was filmed. The Howard family is actually still living inside, which is pretty cool. Also, THERE WERE PEACOCKS THERE!!!! Andrew and I spent a whole hour trying to chase one down, and we got REALLY close before it one upped us and flew up into a tree. Cheater. That wasn't allowed.
We wandered onto the polar bear path (which only had trees...no polar bears?) to the temple of the four winds, which apparently was built so that gentlemen could take their lovers somewhere to conduct their sordid affairs in the summer. From there, we hopped a fence, and found a pasture with a bunch of furry cows! I think the animals were the best part of the trip, haha. There was also an ornamental vegetable garden, but I didn't see any vegetables, and I couldn't see how it was ornamental either.
Later, we went to the ruins of Reivaulx Abbey, and we spent all our time climbing all over them..which apparently you weren't supposed to do. The stupid thing was, we were an hour earlier than our scheduled time of arrival, but instead of just getting back early, they decided to waste time at the top of a hill so that we could see the view from the top (and really, it wasn't that amazing).
Anyways, we got back to Oxford at ~9PM, and even though I was pretty tired, I decided to go to the bop (read: party). SUPER fun! They're basically a better version of the Stanford frat parties, with people actually dancing and good music. Yayyy.
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