Raeann's Study Abroad Adventure: Durham

Today, Jessi and I went with the Students' Union "Connect" group to Durham, which has a castle and a cathedral. I got a window seat, but the bus pictures are quite blurry.

The latter half-ish of a cool looking house.

The blurry countryside is less interesting than the seat cushion pattern reflected in the window. All coaches here are like this.

Tower!

To get to the cathedral, we walked along a river that had some cool terracing.

It looks so... epic. Also, that's a CASTLE to the left. A CASTLE. For reals.

Duck!

The river also had mallards. The water was gross, but they are cute.

More towers.

Towers...

A cool little lodge place that rented canoes, I think.

That was literally right on the water.

The weird tall thing. I never found any inscriptions or anything on it to tell me what it was.

A different tower!

Cathedral. It's a monster.

I think that tower had bells.

Spires...

This is right across from the Cathedral. People live right next to it.
I was impressed.

Imposing camera angle!

I think that Jesus is in that garden, but it could be a saint. It's the brown thing. The face starts at the curved parts at the top of the fence.

It's so... spiky.

Castle.

It just kept going. The place is huge, as I hope my pictures convey.

I'm not sure about the light in the middle there.

It looked cooler in real life. The cross was the point of the picture.

Tower. It was legit.

Accidental silhouette.

The gravestones were all in latin.

Some of them were statues lying down.

A new angle on the tower.

It looks a lot like somewhere to live.

Monster tower, up close this time.

I think it's a war memorial.

Detailing on the cross.

Since 1093.
My basic reaction was shock and awe.
1093!

This was a sanctuary knocker, explained in the next picture.

Below that, it said that the knocker was actually a replica.

Cool old courtyard.

This was blocking me from the courtyard.

It had a cool wall!

Looking out over Durham.

And there was a train,

After the cathedral, Jessi and I (mostly I, actually) wanted to see the castle. It was sort of closed- I think there is a school in it. Durham University, maybe.
I was jealous.

At the castle. My camera was threatening to die at this point, so I was sparing with pictures.

Seriously tall wall.

After the castle, we went to the green part of the map to look for the botanical gardens. On the way there, we walked past at least four colleges. Or universities. I'm still not sure if there's a difference.
Then the botanical garden was £4, so we decided not to go. It probably wasn't that cool anyway.
I did see this:

It reminded me of southwest Oregon.

We managed not to get lost — I'm better at directions than I ever thought I could be — and ambled around the city centre for about four hours because the bus didn't come back until 5 pm.
I had an interesting experience, though.
Up until my conversion to vegetarianism at the beginning of my freshman year of college, I would classify myself as an adventurous eater. There are not a lot of foods that taste like nothing I've ever eaten before. Sure, I discovered cheese and onion pasties (which are delicious), but I've had cheese, onions, and puff pastry before, so the combination was hardly unheard of. Blackcurrant lozenges and pastilles taste like fruit in general. I think all cough drops taste about the same, just with varying degrees of medicine and menthol.
Blackcurrant juice tastes like nothing I've ever tasted before. I literally cannot describe it in terms of food I've come into contact with in the past. There is a hint of orange-ish flavour, but I think that's because Ribena, the particular brand of juice that I bought, puts vitamin c and citric acid in the juice.
It's so delicious. And it's easily found, if a bit expensive, in Greggs, Wilkinson, and Peter's Bakeries (which have oddly spicy cheese and onion pasties). I also found a weird concentrated form (not ribena) at Aldi. It's like concentrated juice in the US, but it's room temperature and in a bottle that (I think) you dilute bit by bit. In any case, I'll miss it when I go back to the US.