One weekend toward the beginning of the term, I got to escape from the chaos of the city and travel north through the countryside. I absolutely love London, but it was a nice change. On Saturday, we went to York, one of the country's most historic cities, founded by the Romans 2,000 years ago. We got to take a tour of York Minster, a cathedral that was completed over 600 years ago. It contains some of the Europe’s oldest and most detailed stained glass windows. For lunch, we had tea and scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream, a very popular dish in England. We spent the night in a hostel in York and moved on to the Yorkshire Dales National Park on Sunday.
We got to see the ruins that were left at the Fountains Abbey in the National Park. On the way back to London, we also stopped in a town called Haworth to see the Home of the Bronte’s. The Bronte family was an extremely literary family full of famous poets and novelists. The daughters wrote things such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The house has been turned into a museum that we got to take a tour through. While we were in Haworth, we also got to see a great view of the rolling hills of the moors covered in a dusting of snow.
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| The cathedral peeking through the streets of York |
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| Inside of York Minster |
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| The point at the top of the arches helped support the building to make it as tall as possible. |
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| The most popular place to get tea and scones in York |
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| Tower in Fountains Abbey |
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| Candy Store in Haworth |
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| View of the moors from Haworth |
Mia Balasi is the Spring 2015 CEA MOJO Photographer in London. She is currently a Junior at the University of Iowa.