Harry lives, that shall convert those tears by number into hours of happiness

Alright, so you'll see the significance of the title line in a minute.  But first we'll start with waking up in York and starting the day off by going to the York Minster.

So a minster is apparently a name for a cathedral.  And the York Minster is the biggest Cathedral in Northern Europe, and the third largest in all of Europe.  So this was pretty legit.  It also has more stained glass from the 16th century than any other cathedral in England, so we spent a lot of time looking at and hearing about the glass.  It was a pretty awesome cathedral, and all of the info about glass was actually interesting.  There was actually also some glass from the Norman times that they've also incorporated into the church, and they showed us how people in the past would mend the windows with this thick lead.  But I guess we've got a better way to mend the cracks now, so they're working on taking out the old repairs and putting the new ones in so that you can actually see the pictures in the windows instead of just colors with random black lines everywhere.  Oh, and guess what?  Constantine (yeah, like Constantine the Great who became Christian) was declared emperor there when his father died there.  Heck yes.

Here's Constantine looking like a total stud Emperor.

Yeah, so then we decided to get lunch out of the wind.  We went to this place called the Slug and Lettuce (yeah, no joke.  I would've gone just for the name) and I got this delicious duck wrap.  Um, yeah, I'd never had duck before, so I thought I'd branch out.  It was ultra delicious and I really liked it.  But then we did this awesome two for one dessert deal (yeah, that was the real reason we went there) and got THE most amazing dessert that I ever have had or ever will have in this life.  It was called the Cookie Cup Explosion, and our four person table basically exploded from all of the amazingness.  It was this delicious chocolate chip cookie with a brownie baked practically inside, and ice cream, and chocolate sauce, and these little chocolate covered honeycomb pieces and mint leaves on top and basically pure heaven.  And I'm SERIOUS okay?  It was the most incredible thing ever.

Ah, aren't we cute?

So after that most delicious dessert, we headed off to Edinburgh.  Big long bus trip again, nice nap, you get the idea.  We got into Scotland, (yeah, that's right people Scotland) where it was very cold and checked into our hostel.  Then we went to the Elephant House (after a little bit of getting lost and asking some nice Quakers for directions) which is where JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter.  We had lunch there, and it was delicious.

This is me eating a meat pie in the Elephant House.  I'm pretty stoked.

Oh, and of course the bathroom was totally decked out with graffiti and quotes from the different movies.  There was even a heart with Mrs. Laura Weasley written inside of it (yeah, I was excited.  Once again someone has done the graffiti for me.) And of course there was a list that started with the words Dumbledore's Army and followed with a list of numbered names.  So I signed up.  I think that I was number 137, but my picture didn't turn out so well.  On the opposite doorpost was a sign for the Order of the Phoenix, and seeing as I'm of age and out of high school, I signed up for that one too.  The best part though was the toliet.

How funny is that?

Yeah, so Elephant House was awesome and the food was actually pretty good too.  On the back of the bathroom door there was directions to a specific grave that's in the graveyard behind the pub.  

Can you read it?

If you can't read it, it says to the memory of Thomas Riddell Esq and down below Thomas Riddell Esq his son.  Um, yeah, it's Voldemort's grave.  It's a real person though.  Died in the 1800's or something.  Graveyards are excellent places to get names from, and I'm guessing that JK probably found some of her names there.  There's a McGonnagal and a Moody in the graveyard too.  It was neat.  Voldemort's officially dead though, so everyone can relax.  I've seen his tombstone.

Next we went over to this big fancy hotel with a name that I can't remember where JK Rowling wrote the seventh book.  Basically she was having writer's block, so she rented out this room (300 pounds a night) and spent three weeks writing the book.  She signed a bust in the room to identify the sight.  So we just went to the outside of the hotel, but it was still really cool.  The beginning and the end all within a ten minute's walk of each other.  Totally crazy.  We wrapped up the night with once again grabbing hot chocolate.  You can't blame me though because seriously it was really cold and really windy and there was a lot of wandering in the city.  But that was Tuesday, the second day of the epic trip.  Harry lives and it did indeed bring hours of happiness.