Scarborough, the land of vintage beach vacation-ness!

Hello Everyone! Well, just to set the scene, Sean and I are back in FL after the LONGEST day of travel in my life. But we're still traveling around for the next few months, so don't even think that this ends the life of this blog. We've been home for about a week, and have since been to Atlanta, and Sean's been busy planning a small east coast tour and is booked up around New Year's in the Pac NW (so stay tuned for that info).

But for now, our time in Scarborough...

So for those of you who don't know, my step-mom Anita's sister Terry married a Brit (David) and has essentially been living in Scarborough ever since. It's an old seaside vacation resort town complete with beaches, rows of brightly colored changing rooms by the sand, a castle, grand hotels, an old health spa, docks and sailing boats, cobblestone streets, and other bits of cute. Terry and David's house was maybe only a ½ mile from the beach, and although it's a sizeable town, there was a ton within walking distance. As we arrived by the ferry in the morning, we were able to do some exploring after a quick lunch at the house. Terry's daughter Katie also came down to hang-out with us for the weekend (most excellent), and we hit up Robin Hood's Bay, and Whitby.

Robin Hood's Bay is a bit north of Scarborough still along the water. No one knows where the name came from, but it probably wasn't from the Robin Hood story as nice as that might have been. It was mainly known in recent his for its extensive smuggling operation, but has since become a eerily cute and quaint vacation town. I wouldn't be surprised if ½ of the homes in the town were rentals. Most of the streets were crazy narrow, only meant to accommodate walkers, and the design of the city definitely has not changed much in the last several hundred years.

We then made our way to Whitby, another seaside town. The factoids I remember most about Whitby is that it's apparently the site of one of the largest Goth festivals in the UK, and is home to Whitby Jet (a black stone that was made famous during the Victorian period, used for jewelry). The day was really about walking around, and taking pictures. Enjoy!!

The next day, we had ourselves a nice little tour of Scarborough itself capped off with a nice little cup o' coffee at Roasters (VERY tasty, well done), and a brief walk-through of the Grand Hotel as well as catch a glimpse of the Crown Spa (not shown below).

On Terry's recommendation, we went to York for a day. Unfortunately for us, it was really cold and rainy most of the day which isn't conducive to saving money (have to pay to play indoors in historic towns). Started by grabbing some lunch at Café Concierto, and then spending some time in the Minster. Having not really ever spent time in an Anglican church, this was a particularly interesting visit. With the entry fee, you were able to walk around a subterranean museum that highlighted the long history of the site of the church from Roman times onward, as well as displaying the Minster treasury, and other relics related to the Minster's history.

The main room was really gorgeous, divided into 2 halves. To the left of the main entrance was the worship area. The quirky thing in this area were the “Semaphore Saints”, a modern addition to the Minster conveniently located by some wonderful heaters. We couldn't figure out what they were saying, but we may have been distracted by the fact that they didn't have heads. ;) The other half of the building was for effigies and for whatever group pow-wow the Anglican ministry has... or its where the choir sits. I have no idea.

I guess the only other activity of note that day was I had my feet munched on by little fish. It's some kind of Thai foot treatment. Nature... God... whoever has a strange sense of humor. That there is some creature out in the world who wants nothing more in life than to chew the dead skin off my feet... weird. They just swarmed me as soon as I dipped my yuckie dogs in the water. I don't know that my 20 minutes really did anything amazing, but it was interesting.

York is really beautiful though. There is a street called The Shambles that was

mentioned in The Domesday Book here in York dating the area to about 1086. The Shambles was a term used for streets where most of the butcher shops were, Shambles being derived from a medieval term. It is also the home to St. Margaret Clitherow, a woman who was martyred hiding and hosting Catholic services in secret out of her home. Her sentence was to be weighed down by a heavy stone without food or water for 3 days... she didn't survive. But despite an grusome history, it has since elevated itself, swapping butcher shops for boutiques, and was named the most picturesque street in the UK for 2010. Here are some other photos to check out...


Overall, our first stop in the UK was great! Next, it's Tenby (Wales) and the Tenby Blues Festival!!