I left my heart on the English coast

Disclaimer: none of the pictures you see in the post come anywhere near to explaining how amazing the moment was when I took these pictures. As much as I love photography, I am currently very frustrated with cameras. They don't do the world justice. But I've done my best.
Thursday morning we left early on a bus to Warwick (pronounced War-ick) Castle (on the left is a picture taken from the tallest tower of the castle). It was pretty amazing to be walking around in a real live castle that was lived in and ruled from. Unfortunately, it has become quite the tourist attraction and so there are many aspects of the castle that reminded me of a theme park, but nonetheless, it was an awesome castle. My favorite part of the castle grounds were the rose garden (where we ate a picnic lunch) and the Peacock Gardens! I have developed quite an obsession with peacocks of late, so naturally this was my favorite part. They are such amazingly beautiful animals - one of them even put its tail feathers up, but it was behind a bush so I didn't get a good picture of that. I was pretty enthralled with those birds. Of the more than 400 pictures I took this weekend (no exaggeration), I think about 50 of them were of peacocks!
After Warwick Castle, we got back on the bus and drove to Whitby - right on the English coast of the North Sea. This is my new favorite place and I might have to move there at some point in my life. Whitby is where the Abbey is located that inspired the story of Dracula...creepy, I know. We stayed literally next door to that same Abbey (below) and got to see it every time we looked out the window of our (incredible) hostel! Our hostel was at the highest point of Whitby, along with the Abbey, so we could see the entire town, the port where the boats come in and all the way up the coast. The first night we just wandered around the town a little bit and went down to the beach. It was so amazing to be at a beach like that - not the tropical palm tree kind, but the kind where there are rock formations and cliffs that just drop off into the ocean. It's a whole different kind of beauty. The next day, Friday, after we toured the Abbey, we went back down to the beach and I climbed up into the rock formations and found a little ledge to sit on(that's me in the picture down there) and just sat up there where I could see everything. I read for a while (Jane Austen - very appropriate I thought) and just enjoyed watching the tide come in, listening to the waves and the seagulls. It was perfect. I wish I knew how to explain it - again, pictures just can't portray what I wish they could. We also wandered around the town for a long time Friday afternoon. There were lots and lots of fun jewelry shops (Whitby is one of the few locations where Jet, a really cool black stone, can be found, so there was tons of Whitby Jet Jewelry).
Both nights in Whitby we (about 20 of us) played one of my all-time favorite games - signs! Those of you who are familiar with this game know that we had immense amounts of fun playing this, and those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, well, I'll try to explain it sometime. It's an incredibly involved game of keep-away without an actual ball...make sense? Probably not...don't worry about it. Just know that we had an awesome time bonding through this highly-intelligent game and I laughed harder than I have laughed in a long time.
Saturday we got up early in the morning and went out behind the hostel where there were lots of meadows separated by stone walls. We climbed up and sat on one of the walls and watched the sunrise (pictured below) and it was one of the most beautiful things ever! It was so neat sitting there and waiting for it for a while and then finally seeing it come up, bright and huge, over the fields. That night on the way home to Oxford, we also got to see the sunset. I don't think I've ever seen a sunrise and a sunset in one day - it was pretty awesome.
Before we went back to Oxford Saturday, we stopped in York to see the Minster, which is one of the biggest Catholic Cathedrals in England. It was beautiful! York is also the home of Yorkshire Tea which I love, so we stopped in one of the many tea rooms and had some tea and scones (so British!) and just relaxed for a while. It was nice since we were so tired from the weekend in Whitby! We were walking around the streets of York when we heard some drums and saw tons of people gathered around some kind of show, so we went over to see what it was all about and ended up standing there and watching this street performance group from Zimbabwe for at least 30 minutes! They were incredibly entertaining and they made me wish that I could do that for the rest of my life! I have never seen people having so much fun with what they do. It was amazing!
After a seemingly very long day in York (we were tired and ready to be home) we had a long bus ride home back to Oxford. Keep our group in your prayers - the majority of the group is either sick or getting there...it's an epidemic that I am determined not to catch! (don't worry, i'm taking my vitamins and drinking plenty of fluids!) But anyway, we made it home after an incredible first weekend. I could not have asked for a better first "real" trip!
(P.S. don't forget to check out the facebook pictures I posted - I could only post a few on here!)