Day trip to York

I'm wearing a vintage 1960s/1970s dolly dress from Retro Rehab in Manchester, grey ribbed tights from Primark and black patent child's shoes from Topshop.

On Saturday Jian Wei and I went on a day trip to York. After Manchester its easily my favourite city in the North of England: it's steeped in history, the architecture is beautiful and it's full of lovely walks and unusual shops and friendly tearooms. The fact that the sun was shining and it was a glorious day made it all the more enjoyable and Jian Wei and I stumbled across our dream place to live...

Isn't it just the most idyllic street? Located within the Medieval city walls and basked in sunshine, with the following image as the view immediately opposite, this row of Victorian houses completely stole my heart.

We spent the morning pottering about the Medieval walls feeling quite vertiginous at times, ate lunch outside an Italian restaurant that used to be an old girl's school, did a little charity and antique shopping and I bought a 1930s pistachio green jug for my future home. Jian Wei invested in his first 'mantique', a 1920s flask which at £9 was our find of the day, until the oddball shop keeper began an enthusiatic rendition of his xenophobic views and we made a hasty exit. Can anybody else believe that you don't see the quintessential English gentleman walking around in London anymore with his cane and bowler hat? Our shopkeeper seemed to blame Japanese tourists in York solely for this demographic and social shift. I don't really understand why he was hoping to find shared beliefs from a mixed race couple, one of whom at least had the potential of actually being Japanese.

And a few more obligatory tourist snaps...

In other news, the lovely Hannah of Foxtail and Fern featured me on her blog today!

All photography by Jian Wei and myself.