Breakfast: Like a pig at a trough

13.01.2008

There was a very good selection of hot foods at breakfast today, but none of it was any good - so why did I eat so much of it??? I think I even oinked like a pig a few times at breakfast today! But it was still WAY better than the average hostel breakfast. They had some sickeningly-sweet fudge yogurt, orange/apple/grapefruit juices, coffee, and tea. The selection of cold cuts and cheese was decent - ham, and some kind of wurst. In my unemployed backpacking days, I would've made myself a sandwich and smuggled it out of the dining room for later consumption. Buns, toast, and pains au chocolats were also available - but they kept their pains au chocolats under the heat lamp??? What a way to ruin them! They weren't that great anyway, so maybe it didn't matter. I didn't touch any of the fruit - I didn't feel like having grapefruit or prunes that had been badly picked over. The scrambled eggs were pretty strange, and the sausage had an odd flavour. The deep-fried hash browns were pretty oily and soggy. I went to the tourist office to try and get on a free tour of York. The volunteer tour guide asked if we still wanted to do the tour since it was so rainy - we all replied that it was no problem. The other tour members included a couple of students from Manchester (Turkish and German), and a couple from Bath. They had the cutest little daughter - always smiling and laughing. The mother was half-Scottish and half- Spanish - she confirmed that while I have an accent while speaking Spanish, it definitely WASN'T Irish! Vindication!!! We walked atop York's walls - that was probably the highlight of the tour but overall, the tour was kind of boring. There seemed to be gaps in the information, but that could've been due to my short attention span! I spent a chunk of the afternoon over at the Castle museum. I tried using an internet café, but a couple of people were totally abusing the Wi-Fi connection by doing some massive downloading. I couldn't even load up my email after 3 or 4 minutes, so I decided to come back later. Went back to Mr. Sandwich for a snack - I asked for a ham/cheese/salad sandwich, but he gave me a chicken salad sandwich by mistake. It was pretty huge and tasty with some nuts, raisins, lettuce, and tons of mayo. Back to York's Minster for the evensong service - it's a pretty impressive cathedral, but it was strange that there were no benches in the nave for people to sit on. The Chapter House was neat - it had some very intricate floor gratings and some creepy carved faces on the pillars. Entrance to the Minster was free because I attended the service, so I didn't want to loiter around too long since I had already scammed the system! I watched some snooker as I ate a kebab at the hostel - Stephen Hendry now sucks! I used to be a big fan back in high school, but simply got bored of the game. Got to chatting with an old timer from nearby Yorkshire. He's here for a short getaway for cycling and walking. Though he's in his 70's, the guy usually walks 8 miles per day! He also loves Spain - my guess that it also has something to do with the women. It was neat talking with the old timer - I guess his wife was a former Olympic cycling champion. I went up to the TV lounge to see what was on - I caught the credits of "Chariots of Fire" then watched some repeats of the improv shows I watched a few days ago in Edinburgh. It was another quiet night and an early bed time for me.