Well, Butter My Bottom and Call Me a Biscuit!

Okay, for some idiotic reason, I thought it'd be a good idea to hold off on blogging until the weekend was over, so now I have to worry about thursday night all the way through to today, and that is a LOT of stuff for all five of my readers to have to worry about, so I'll probably be breaking this into multiple entries, but I haven't decided yet. Basically, it depends on how tired I get of typing (and more accurately, of recoding the HTML for all the pictures I post because my blog likes to do funny things with them). Here goes nothin'...

Thursday night, Ric and I ate at a Cantonese restaurant, and as Ric has been to China before, I trust him when he asserts that the restaurant was extremely authentic and have therefore decided to bring a lifetime supply of snacks should I ever go to China. It's not that the food was bad, but I'm finicky about meat anyway, and the last thing that I want to do is pop a bite of yummy looking meat into my mouth only to discover that 99% of said yummy bite is bones. Maybe the Chinese have no rules regarding table manners and the spitting of bones, but eating something that riddled with them in England is just freaking WEIRD. I spent most of the meal eyeballing things suspiciously. Damned good chicken though. Woot, thursday was nice and simple to blog. Anywho...

Friday night, we were starving, so the plan was to go to the pub across the street from Kevin's hotel and get some food and beer. All was working grandly until we realized that the pub wasn't serving food that night due to a kitchen staff training session. The guys had a beer, I had a rum and coke, we hung out for a bit, then decided to walk up the street to the Fox to get some food. Now I had not eaten anything in something like 12 hours, so let's just say I was already a little happy from my one drink. I paused to take a shot of the church across the street...ladies and gentlemen, please observe Evidence Numero Uno as to why taking pictures after alcohol is a bad idea...

Isn't it a beauty?! For anyone wondering, that's what it really looked like to me at the time. Back to the story here, we get to the Fox, go to order, and are told that they quit serving food at 5 pm. We already walked down there in the cold, so naturally, we decided to have a drink there, too, before leaving to find food. The barkeep jokingly told Ric our tab was about 4 times what it actually was, so a good bit of bystanders got a laugh out of Ric going, "Dude, I may be American, but I'm not that dumb!" *Sidebar*There was a German Shepherd roaming around the building. Yes, I tried my damnedest to convince Kevin that he was seeing things, but to no avail. *End Sidebar* As we exit the building, I notice an extremely large sign with the food service times. So much for not being dumb Americans, heh heh!

And on we go, to Delrio's Cuchina Italiana, which is where I wanted to go from the get-go, but the guys didn't decide to humor me until one of the guys in the pub recommended it--that's what they get for doubting my Google prowess, bwahaha! By the end of dinner, which was AWESOME, Kevin is pretty tipsy, the conversation has migrated to where conversations always migrate when I'm around (my boobs), and I'm wearing about a fourth of my meal. Doesn't it look delicious?

Poor pink sweater. We did a good bit of driving around aimlessly just to sight-see, then called it a night.

Saturday, they were having this huge Christmas bazaar kind of thing in City Centre, and one of the guys Ric's working with over here was going to be there as well (his band was playing), so Ric and I spent all morning driving around town just taking pictures and having a good old time, then went back and picked Kevin up around lunch so we could all head into the CC to check out the festivities. Here's a few pics of our driving around...

The Minster from the street:

The cat burglar...okay, so he only looks suspicious. Actually, he's a postal worker.

Oh, the things I do for you people--in the process of trying to get this picture of the walls...

I wound up ramming my face into this...

and achieving this result--yes, here I am dazed, confused, seeing spots, and pouting.

Please observe the dent in my forehead. Anyway, back to the walls...

The Romans built their fort in about 71 AD and surrounded it with a rectangle of walls; while the majority of the original walls have been destroyed, there's a tiny bit left, and most of the remaining walls date back to the 12th-14th century.

Driving over the river...

A few store fronts and road signs...

Clifford Tower. Don't be fooled by this picture. Clifford Tower is right in the middle of the city surrounded by buildings, traffic, etc, but it looks remote! Here's a link if anyone wants some history about it--really interesting stuff!

I took this picture because the advertisement amused me,

but then I got curious, so I googled it. As it turns out, Bile Beans was a laxative created in Australia in 1899 that got really popular in the UK around the 1930s. The York Arts Forum restored the ad in 1986, about the same time the product was discontinued. Perhaps they weren't keeping everyone quite as healthy, bright-eyed, and slim as they claimed? Oh, and speaking of ads that amused me, I present the source of this entry's title...

York Art Gallery (the statue in front is of York-born painter William Etty)...

So yeah, that's about all I'm going to post of our driving around before picking up Kevin...I'll post more of our walking around City Centre and of the rest of the weekend later, promise! Hope you enjoyed the pix so far!