York

We drove from Leamington to York which took a bit longer than originally planned. We arrived at the Midway House B&B we had reserved and settled in a bit. The B&B was a pleasant surprise: clean, well-equipped, warm and cozy rooms of a very good size and the couple running the house were great. We headed out to visit York itself for a bit and ended up coming back to the B&B and went to a local pub for a York meal. The visit around York was actually quicker than we had originally planned as the city centre itself is actually quite small. It's all pedestrian, whcih is wonderful, and very touristy with lots of the standard franchise shops all over. We got a relatively good feel for the main part of town and then headed back to the B&B and went to a local pub for a York meal.

The next morning we went right to the university where we met a student who is in his 2nd year and who graduated from the same school and section as Jessica (Lycée Collège International Honoré de Balzac) and is also reading Politics at York. Our tour guide therefore knows precisely where Jessica is coming from as well as knowing the university quite well. He has a sister who is still in Jessica's school and I know his mother quite well. He was an excellent guide! He spent all morning with us and showed us around each building, each hall, the library, the accomodation areas, the lakes, ... all the time telling us about the university itself, the Politics department in particular and answering absolutely all of our questions. It was a great introduction to English university life in general, and York specifically, as this is the first we have visited. We found the university to be relatively small, although spread out, and quite traditional with many buildings centuries old.

At noon we met with the head of the Politics department for a bit. It was good to have a one-on-one meeting with an actual professor and we learned a lot about how the school operates, how the Politics department functions and a bit about the admissions criteria...

Once we were done with our meeting Jessica had had enough of York and meeting people and such and we were back on the road...