Hi everyone!

Everything is actually going quite well since I last blogged. I finally got my final exam schedule, and I should be finished with finals by June 4th. This is great because I leave June 11th to head back to Pennsylvania.  However, that only gives me a little less than a week to do any last minute exploring of Europe.  Because I have classes everyday except Thursday, I spend Saturdays (and some Sundays) vising places in the UK with friends.  After Manchester, the next places I visited were York, UK and Oxford, UK. I will post about my visit to Nottingham and Whitby a little later this week!

York, UK

I visited York, UK on February 16th with a few friends. We were actually supposed to be going to Harrogate that day, but we missed our train. We decided to go York, because it isn’t that far from Leeds (45 minutes). York is a very beautiful town and there is a lot to do while you’re there.  At the time that we visited, there was a Vikings festival. It was really cool and there were reenactments near the Vikings Museum in York.  We also got the opportunity to see the remains of a castle and visited the York Castle Museum. Before we left, we managed to make our way to York’s Sweet Story. This is a must see for chocolate lovers! It’s basically a museum of chocolate that consist of a tour where people get to learn about the history of chocolate.  We didn’t have enough time to do the tour, so we just went to the caf� and bought a lot chocolate! We were also able to walk along some of the York City Walls before it got dark.  The walls were used to defend York during the medieval times. All in all, York was a great place to visit. We actually loved it so much that we plan to go back after Easter break!

 Remnants of a castle in York

A portion of the York City Walls

We stopped for a photo session while walking along the York City Walls

Oxford, UK

A friend and I visited Oxford, UK on February 26.  We really wanted to go to Oxford, but we knew it would be a bit more expensive to visit on a weekend. So, we decided to visit Oxford during the week. The coach ride was about 4 1/2 hours, which actually went by really quick. Once we got to oxford we went straight to the university. The University of Oxford is absolutely beautiful. It was fun walking around the campus. For the most part, the campus is open to the public, and the price to see areas where some scenes of Harry Potter was filmed ranged from 1-5 pounds (which wasn’t bad).  After exploring the campus, we decided to explore the rest of Oxford which is equally as beautiful as the campus. We ate lunch at The Eagle and Child.  This is the same pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, along with other writers, used to get together! After lunch, we explored more of the town and ended the day visiting Christ Church.  The Church’s dinning hall was the inspiration for the Hogwarts Great Hall!

A potion of the university

Christ Church Dinning Hall

Bridge of Sighs

Our booth at The Eagle and Child!

Cheers

~Jazmin

Location: Leeds