Dracula's Whitby

Following my newly discovered passion for fossil hunting, a few days ago we decided to go on a trip to Whitby. It is small town on the North Yorkshire coast, about 50 miles from York, reachable by road through the heather-covered beautiful North Yorkshire Moors.

(The ruins if St Hilda's Abbey founded in 657 AD)

Whitby is known for its well preserved ammonite fossils, which can be found on the seashore or purchased from stalls or shops in the town. Whitby's skyline is dominated by the ruins of St. Hilda’s Abbey, high on Whitby's East Cliff. Spreading below Whitby, a maze of alleyways and narrow streets run down to the busy quayside.

(St Mary's Church and its graveyard)

From the old town of Whitby, 199 steps lead up to the parish church of St. Mary, whose churchyard on Whitby's East Cliff gave Bram Stoker the inspiration to write his world famous book, Dracula. Part of the novel was set here, and incorporated various pieces of Whitby folklore, including the beaching of the Russian ship Dmitri, which became the basis of Demeter in the book. Furthermore, it was at the original public library on Marine Parade in Whitby that Stoker discovered the name "Dracula”.

Chapter 6 of Dracula begins with a description of Whitby, recorded by Mina in her journal. Mina has just arrived to join her friend Lucy for a summer holiday, and admires the beauty of the town:

"This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour … The houses of the old town – the side away from us – are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes and which is a scene of part of ‘Marmion’, where the girl is built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay, to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea"

(The 199 steps)

The church and the graveyard feature prominently in the Whitby chapters of Dracula. It is here that Mina and Lucy spend time sitting on their favourite bench. Here they meet the old fisherman, Mr Swales, who regales them with stories gleaned from inscriptions on the headstones. This is also the spot where Dracula first attacks Lucy. As Mina climbs the 199 steps and approaches the bench she sees “something long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure” and catches a glimpse of his “white face and red, gleaming eyes.”

Amazingly, many visitors to Whitby ask where Dracula's grave is located, forgetting that he is a work of fiction. The Count's devotees search St Mary's Church graveyard, after scaling the 199 steps, in search of his last resting place!

The Dream City

It is said that Venice is a dead city or at least a dying city, as it is slowly sinking into the marshy ground of the Laguna and because there are less and less “true” Venetians living there and more and more tourists every year. But from the first time I set foot in Venice long time ago, for me it was, it is and it will always be my dream city.

For me going to Venice is like entering a giant theme park, it's the place to get hopelessly lost for a day. Through the mysterious alleyways leading off from the city, endless mazes of backstreets and deserted squares, on a Venice trip, you'll find that this city is a perfect place to walk for hours on end, pretending to know where you are.

When we want to celebrate something important or just forget our tedious lives for a while my best friend and I treat ourselves to a trip to Venice. We don’t even need to stay over night, just a few hours to enjoy together.

This time the weather was fantastic (we just missed the flooding a few days before) and although it was last Sunday of October it was rather crowded as the Venetian Marathon was on. But it was worth it. Just judge for yourselves!

Isn't this absolutely magnificent? I could spend hours and hours just watching gondole and vaporetti travelling up and down the Canal Grande...

The colours are incredible and even more sparkling on a sunny autumn day.

A hidden "canaletto" with the washing out to dry in the sunshine and boats "parked just outside the door!

And this is our own Gondolier! He didn't sing "O Sole Mio" or play the accordion to us, but what can you expect for only 50cents a ride??? Yes, a real bargain!

So happy to be there together!!!! When will you go next?

Spooky Tour

For our Bank Holiday Monday we decided to go for a day trip to Edinburgh by train. It only takes 2 ½ hours from York and the train journey is pleasant as you go through Durham and its great cathedral, Newcastle and its impressive bridges, along the breathtaking Northumberland coast, through Berwick on Tweed and finally Edinburgh. Although I’ve been to Edinburgh many times, I always find it fascinating and I discover something new each time.

One of new experiences in Edinburgh this time was to go on the Real Mary King’s Close Tour. Beneath the City Chambers on the Royal Mile lies Edinburgh's deepest secret - a warren of hidden streets where real people lived, worked and died between the 17th and the 19th centuries. Now a new attraction allows visitors to step back in time to walk through these underground closes and witness some of the dramatic episodes and extraordinary apparitions from this site's fascinating and historically rich past.
These buildings were inhabited during the Plague, and a lot of people died in the close. This has led to many ghost stories, which the guide was brilliant at explaining to us.

You are guided round the old houses and work buildings, which are still mostly intact - it's amazing to see the different rooms in the houses, and the old work-places. These have some (scarily life-like!) models put in to help you imagine how people lived. The atmosphere is brilliant, very electric, due to the huge number of recorded ghost-sightings. This is helped along slightly by the guide - at one point the tour were ushered into a room, in pitch darkness, and a ghost story told, along with sound effects – it was rather scary!!

The celebrity of the close's supernatural resident is Annie, a ghostly pre-teen who (so the story goes) scared the daylights out of a Japanese psychic in 1992. This lady had been unimpressed by the tour until she arrived at one of the many small rooms. There she was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of sickness, hunger and cold and, when she tried to leave felt the ghastly tug of a ghostly hand on her leg. Poor Annie's spectral life has now been fleshed out and it is believed that she had been left to die by her family. Since then, people from round the world have come to "Annie’s room". Many have told tour guides of seeing impressions of the spirit in the room; some visitors, treating the room as a shrine, have left gifts for the little girl out of affection.

This was an absolutely fabulous tour, definitely one not to be missed if you're going to be in Edinburgh. And if you wish to listen to the audiotour in Italian, well, that's my voice!

Slow Gin?

During my day trips around Yorkshire (unfortunately no sunny Italy for me this summer!) I’ve come across something totally new and unusual to me: SLOEgin. It is a liqueur distilled in a farm near York. I didn’t know that that a sloe is a wild plum, the fruit of the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). Hedgerow sloes are ready to be harvested from late September onwards.

The SLOEgin is made in the traditional way steeping hand-picked hedgerow sloes in London gin and sugar, then leaving it to mature. The result is a delicious ruby liqueur with the unique aromatic cherry-like notes of the sloe, a hint of the dryness of the gin and a strong warming glow.

I was told that you can also try it as a cocktail mixer with orange juice or lime (or both), vermouth or ginger beer or even champagne or sparkling wine.

Useless to say that this drink will feature as my welcome drink to my visiting friends until the end of the summer! You learn something new (and delicious!) every day.