Travel Journal March 13, 1999
Train trip to York

London

After breakfast, my first stop was Mailboxes, Etc. I wanted to ship home a number of items which I had purchased in London, and didn't want to carry with me. Also, there were a number of items I had brought on my trip which I now determined were not needed. Even so, my backpack (actually, it's Rebecca Nathenson's backback, she lent it to me) has gotten quite a bit heavier. I had some difficulty carrying it around today.

After checking out of my hotel, I made one last stop at Cyberia to update my site, and then made my way to King's Cross Station. I bought a one-way ticket to York for £56. (There are trains approximately every hour.)

Yorkshire

Take a train to York, the center of Northern England since Roman toimes. Large sections of the city are still exactly as they were in Elizabethan times (except for the TV aerials), and it's a very pleasant place to walk and explore. Stay the night at Hobbit's, a pleasant little place near the center of town. -- Richard Foss

I managed to get a good window seat - not hard, as the train was not nearly full. Here's a few pictures of Derbyshire and Yorkshire (and a few other counties who's names I don't know) as they went whizzing by.

  

One interesting thing to note is the buildings shown in these photos are typical. Almost all of the buildings are rustic; I didn't see any McDonalds, business parks, or signs of heavy industry along the railway side, although a few smokestacks and cooling towers appeared in the far distance.

  

York

I walked into town after checking in to the hotel, but it was too dark to take photos. Unfortunately, I got seriously lost on the way back. This is primarily due to the fact that I had drunk one too many ciders that evening. Note to self: for future reference, "one too many ciders" equals one cider. In other words, I drank a single pint of cider and became quite intoxicated, a state which I have never before experienced. On the whole, I found it somewhat unpleasant - motor control was shot to hell (as I attempted to eat dinner the potatos kept slipping off the plate), just a touch of nausea, and I noticed a kind of tunnel vision, whereas I couldn't seem to attend to anything other than what was directly in the middle of my visual field. It's almost as if it exacerbated my ADD (which makes sense, considering that alcohol is a depressant, and Ritalin is a stimulant.) As far as being an anaesthetic, I find that the trance of intense software creation is more effective and more pleasant.