Day 30: Trip to Whitby on Sunday (Day 29)

Back to back trips last weekend~ After exhausting myself at Salisbury, repeated the process again the next morning, to go to Whitby, a little seaside town famous for Fish and Chips :) The journey was again four and a half hours long, sigh... With even worse traffic jams than the previous day! People here really love their weekend getaways!

Pretty much starving already by the time we arrived, so first thing was of course to look for lunch (food again as usual >.<).. The previous night I'd already done some research about the best shop in town, since practically every shop in Whitby sells fish and chips.. Best thing was that on the way over, the shop that our guide recommended was the same one I had found.. :D

Which is:

Love the blue sky and the seagulls~

Most famous F n C in Whitby according to the locals.. Yippee~

and I got to try it!!!

Going to do battle with the crowd.. :) FYI, this pic wasn't posed~

Its so famous that people are willing to queue for it!

Check out the line, and thats only half of it..
This is the dine in queue only, the take-away queue is just as long..

We were the only 2 ppl from the whole coach who chose to dine in, oh well, i do enjoy a good culinary experience.. :) and there's oso the fact that by dining in, you have to pay more for the same order, I absolutely do not know why.. I didn't really mind since we were sharing one set anyway.. Its 8.95 for cod and chips if you dine in, but only 5.40 if you take-away.. how weird is that?!

and after queuing awhile, we were in!

Place settings..

Thinking abt food makes me glow.. O.o..

waiting for food to arrive in the cosy cafe..

All the seafood available, mostly diff types of fish..

We ordered some mussels, this was listed as a starter- 1/4 pound of mussels for 3.95 pounds, so we assumed it woud be something light, turned out to be ard 20 mussels.. yummy~

Giant mussels in garlic sauce.. Mmm..

Mussel time.. :)

Taadaa, the star of the day~ We had cod and chips..
There's a picture of me happily cutting up the fish, but i look like a glutton there, better not post it, haha...

What we had.. That giant chunk of bread came with the mussels.. and they call that a starter?!

We made a tower with the shells.. :D

After the super gratifying and wallet hurting meal, it was time to start walking all the calories off.. Walking around Whitby is a nice experience, cos everything just looks like a postcard..

At one part of the pier~

Lots and lots of seagulls.. They don't smell that good :*

Then we went into one of the candy stores to check out one of Whitby's famous products, a candy called 'Rock' cos its very hard.. I didnt buy any cos to me its all just sugar and colouring, but my friends did, and i did get to taste some.. Uhm.. I still think I was right to skip it.. haha.. Lots of interesting things in the candy store tho.. :)

Samples of Rock (the stick things)

These are called lover boy, hahahha...

These are kind of gross.. would anyone eat them??!

Cute.. There were chocolate pigs, cows, cars, anything you can think of... :)

Then we walked to the end of the pier and checked out the sea view.. There are 2 lighthouses, one each on the East and West Piers.. and a little beach.. but as the sun only popped out once in awhile and the waves were pretty strong, those people who wanted to swim and sunbathe were disappointed once again..

It took a lot of patience to get all three speedboats in the same picture k..

Strong waves~

Blind person alert..

My attempt at an artistic photo.. Fail no?

Lighthouse on West Pier..

really cute explorer bus~

The most famous thing in Whitby is actually not the fish and chips, but the remains of the Whitby Abbey, supposedly built in the 1400s.. and you have to climb 199 steps to reach it.. We decided to skip that and just climb another small hill to see the Captain James Cook Monument.. If you dunno who James Cook is, he found Australia.. hehe.. I did my homework.. :) Lovely view all around from atop the hill.. ^^V

We had to climb this *groan*

The Captain James Cook Monument that we climbed all the way up to see~

I'm not lying, hehehe...

That is one cheeky bird, LOL...
Its a real bird, they really like standing on statues, especially heads..

Here's the nice view from our hill (the rest of our classmates all climed the 199 steps), as I said:

View from the hill opposite..
Thats the ruins of Whitby Abbey on the left and St Mary's (like Salisbury) church on the right.. Anglo Saxons have no creativity whatsoever when naming their streets and buildings, sigh..

Those are the 199 steps that we skipped, yay~

Zoomed shot of the ruins, can you spot the graveyard??

Can see both lighthouses from up there as well..

The sea~

The town~

Flowers on the hill..

Then we continued exploring our side of the hill.. Found a nice tunnel that led to some narrow steps where you could see a great view of the river leading out to the sea..

Tunnel entrance

The view.. (click to view clearly, postcard worthy!)

They were having a little boat race that day...

After going downhill, we checked out the teeny tiny Lifeboat museum.. Whats a lifeboat you ask?

Essentially used during emergencies at sea..

In the museum, only one room..

Old lifeboat

Modern lifeboat..

Then we explored round the shops a bit.. Guess what i got? A bag of dried apricots.. I am so weird~

another Whitby specialty, ammonite fossils~

Glass making workshop.. They had all sorts of pretty stuff there, especially little glass animal figurines, but oh so expensive..

Guess what?!

Eat them and you die.. hahahha...

Before getting to the shops, we had to cross the pretty bridge you see in the picture below, its a swing bridge that they open to let ships pass through.. they were about to open the bridge as I was having this pic taken and I was literally chased off the bridge, hahahaha...




Here's a video showing how the bridge swings open, nothing earth shattering tho.. :)

Whitby is also famous for producing jet, a kind of crystal like thing and these 2 pics show the remains of the last victorian (hint: ancient) workshop, all the rusty tools and stuff..

We were supposed to have a boat ride out to sea, only 2 pounds, I was really looking forward to the 'Captain James Cook Adventure' on an old-fashioned boat, but too bad.. had to forego the boat ride in the end, cos of time constraints (I like this word from Project Management :D)

Saw this on the way back to the coach for another long journey back...

Loved the sights and sounds and food.. but i sure was drained after 2 consecutive days of acting all touristy and sitting more than 16 hours on a cramped bus.. I like the experience tho.. So thats about all on my day trip to

:D