Exploring Sunderland — Friday 14 October

So, the blackcurrant Throaties just make my mouth taste like stale candy instead of congestion-defying awesomeness.
On the other hand, toast with butter and honey is really, really delicious. I had never tried it before, having lost my taste for peanut butter and honey many years ago when I decided that the side of the sandwich that got soaked by honey tasted like honeycomb (sweet, until all the honey is gone and you're left with a nasty, waxy lump in your mouth). That ended my fascination with putting honey on bread, and I turned my honey attentions to tea, and later to greek yogurt and smoothies.
I have rediscovered the joy of putting honey on bread in honey on toast. It tastes like the deliciousness of toast with butter (which is pretty delicious), but with sweetness. And, since I eat it in about thirty seconds, the bread is safe from becoming honeycomby.
Update on that- it doesn't work for bagels, because they don't get as warm and therefore the honey gets cold and doesn't spread as well.
So far, I foresee my food stipend being consumed by cheese and onion pasties, Blackfriars flapjacks, cranberry pomegranate juice, milk, pasta sauce, honey, and bread. I even get the cheap thin bread, and I'm probably going to end up spending at least £100 on it just so that I can eat honey on toast. But it's so worth it. And now I'm feeling compelled to tell you all about everything I've been eating and why I chose it, but I'm going to resist the urge. You're welcome.
I took a walk today, the object being to find the weird blinking light that I can see from my window at night. It drives me crazy, because I have no idea what it is. What is it? Why is it blinking? Why is its pole striped? Why can I not see it during the day? Gah!
I actually figured out that it was some kind of crosswalk awareness light thing (I don't understand how they know when to blink, since I can't find buttons on them), since I walked past a bunch of them yesterday afternoon on the street behind Clanny House.

Found it.

It's funny. I kind of figured, like when I was a little kid and the whole world was comprised of the Tri Cities and maybe a little bit of Seattle floating in the sky somewhere like a mythical place where it always rains, that Sunderland began with Clanny House and South Hylton (the road that Clanny's on) and just went south and east from here. I had actually never considered that there was a Sunderland behind Clanny House. Sure, I've wandered the city centre and ambled up and down South Hylton and even ventured around the corner to the street with all the fruit and veg stores that I keep meaning to post about, but behind Clanny? Not so much.
There's so much stuff back there! I took pictures. I'm also going to put up pictures of the rest of the area, and I'm trying to tag them on google maps so that you can see where I live if you look at my picasa album (linked on the side of the blog). I hope you all appreciate this, because it's really inconvenient to do the tagging by hand without the aid of a fancy GPS thingy that does it for you.

Across the street from Clanny. Very cheap taxis that don't come to Newcastle Airport when summoned.

The bus stop that I wait at to get to class. 

The mythical other direction.

The street that runs next to the hospital. I think it's called Kayll Road.

Fairly typical housing. 

Cafe/tea rooms

The library, which looks epic but is closed on thursdays.

St. Gabriel's. Not sure if it's anglican or catholic.

Crazy intersections, even if they're not roundabouts.

Classically british.

A lot of houses have adjoining doorways, but they are often painted different colours. The difference here is very slight, but I took some more pictures that have more obvious differences. 

Sometimes it looks cool, sometimes it's a little annoying.

That just looked cool. I want that house.

That's a much better, less painful example.

The hospital. I don't know what the tower is for.

Two cafes across the street from each other.

Rowland's pharmacy.

Cool tree by the hospital. I bet it's really dramatic in the winter.

Fruit and veg store number 1...

A reformed church with a cool tower.

Cool british streets. The reformed church is on the right in the foreground, and is attached to the first house. There's also another church tower in the background.

Fruit and veg store number 2...

Fruit and veg store number 3... It was closing just as I got there. 

The most wonderful little bag.

Cheese and onion pasty!
!!!

Green's Pharmacy- since sometime in the 1800s.
There's also another fruit and veg store just out of the right frame of the picture. I don't know what happened to the picture.

And there's the greggs. This one's not too great, actually, since the cheese and onion pasties are usually kind of cold.

And the post office, right next to the reformed church.

Next, behind Clanny and beyond!

The other side of Clanny. Very british, with the iron fence and the trees hanging over the sidewalk.

I can see Adam, Conor, and Micha's rooms rom here...

It's kind of bothering me that I don't know any of the fruit trees around here.

This is the first one of those stupid blinky crosswalk things that I saw.

We have that at our house... I believe it's liverwort.

Cool backyard alley thing. It wouldn't be ideal to live with, but it looks cool.

St Josephs, I think. It's right next to St Mary's.

Absolutely classic optician's shoppe. With two p's and an e. I wish I needed an optician, just so I could go there.

Cool old building and another blasted crosswalk thing.

The churches are just massive.
Also, lensflare!

Lovin' the towers.

That's a workman's club. So, a bar where people who have jobs go, and that Florian would try to get into.

I love the flowers in these rather drab little houses.

I seriously love these walls, and I walked past so many today.

Windy. Also, classic countryside to one side of the freeway...

...And ten million houses crammed next to each other on the other side of the freeway.

Wall!

More houses.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be here... It's this nice little bike path-like thing with all these houses right next to it, and these awkward little lights, and such a nicely kept lawn (verge) that I really wasn't sure.

Awkward lamp.

Ruinous tower, if that's the right word. I didn't get close enough to check it out, because that would have been a long walk.

Bridge for... trains? Maybe?

Cool plant.

See? Very nice lawn-y area.

Wall! I think it's so cool how some parts are dark (maybe burnt, which is less cool) and others are pale.

Again. I want one.

They're a bit taller than me, as a rule. Probably two metres. I'm not as upset as the picture makes it look. I would have taken another, but people came and I felt awkward.
Also, it is windy here. Just look at my hair.

That's the metro track...

...and that's the metro.

I wanted to capture all the chimneys, but I think I took a few steps too far over the top of the hill I was on. There are a lot of chimneys here.

Mini-wall!

For you, Dad. And the next three pictures, although I'm not sure about one of them.

Old sportscars in front of a garage.

That one might be american.

I felt a bit sketchy, taking pictures of people's cars, so I left it at that.

Typical bus. The University Connect ones have some distinct bodywork. One of them is lime green (there's also a city bus that's lime green. It's confusing.) and the other is red.

Back to the real, initially acknowledged world!
That's actually where my birthday dinner came from. It's a very victorian little place, like a hotel lobby, and then it's this kind of cheap curry place.

"The Villa" on Washington Street. It's the biggest house I've seen.

Back to Clanny House, block 1. Home, sweet home.

So that's sunderland, as far as I know.