We spent most of Tuesday with Ghost, Queenie and The Klockwork Monsta around town.
We drank tea in Marie Antoinette's Tea Room (I have wanted to stop and have tea here ever since I spotted it the first time I was in Whitby).
Marie Antoinette's Tea room is a very beautiful little tea room close to the 199 steps up to the famous St Mary's Churchyard and Whitby Abbey.
The inside of the tearoom is decorated in a very vintage style (although some rooms are a little more Victorian than Rococo) and there are portraits of the famous, final, French Queen on most of the walls.
The downstairs room is pretty small, but there are two quirky little rooms upstairs filled with little treasures.
They have a moderate selection of teas (I'm not sure if they had any fancy coffees though as I wasn't paying attention...Fail on my part I'm sorry), and what looked to be some very delicious cakes for the non Vegans.
Afterwards we wandered around the kooky and cute little shops around the area, for tea lovers a must is the little shop nearby that sells leaf tea blends ranging from normal English Breakfast to unusual blends such as Lapsang Souchong (described by the first person who ever sold me a cup as smelling like Smoky Bacon, and he was right!) and Sweet Almond blend (which I eventually bought a bag of).
The tea leaves are very reasonably priced, most blends being only £2 for a 100gram bag, and given that one teaspoon of Sweet Almond blend is giving me a rather beautiful pot full of tea I suspect this may last me quite some time.
Some Pumpkins above Russel's chippie
Back on the other side of the river we found some vintage jewellery shops and a small craft fair with a Gothic touch where I bought a fabulous watch broach (photo soon).
On Tuesday Kev and I headed over to Scarborough to visit The Sea Life Centre.
To get to Scarborough from Whitby you need to take a bus that takes an hour, we got on the earliest one we could so that we could spend as much of the day as we could in Scarborough.
As it was so early I ended up falling asleep on the bus (glamorous I know...) and woke up to hear one of the other passengers telling a story about the first time he encountered Goths in Whitby.
The story amused me so I thought I would share:
When he was eight years old he saw a hearse coming down the road and stopping next to one of the pubs, he assumed that the landlord had died so he stopped to pay his respects and then a bunch of drunk Goths fell out of the hearse.
When we reached Scarborough we headed straight for The Sea Life Centre, which is a little bit of a trek from the bus stop, but still it was a nice walk along the beach.
The centre was undergoing some renovations when we visited so we were unable to see the Octopi, which was a shame as Kev had really wanted to see them, but we did get to see an assortment of fish, sharks, turtles, otters and seals.
My favourites were the amazing sea dragons who were cunningly camouflaged so that if you just looked at them quickly you would mistake them for a piece of seaweed.
I totally reverted back to childhood around the ray tank, they were so beautiful I could have sat and watched them for hours if it wasn't that I really wanted to touch a crab and watch the otters being fed.
The one thing I didn't like was the way the seal sanctuary was laid out so that you could see the poor injured seals recovering.
I understand that the object was to educate people on the dangers of seals getting caught in fishing nets or swallowing rubbish, but I just found it really disrespectful to the seals to let people look through glass at them while they were suffering, and I can't imagine what it must be like during peak season with kids banging on the glass.
Poor seals :(
After The Sea Life Centre we went for a stroll through Peasholm Park.
Peasholm Park is a lovely Victorian Park, modelled after traditional Japanese Gardens, all be it done in a rather amusing Victorian fusion way (brick Pagodas anyone?).
The park is also the home of an amazing miniature boat show that I saw as a child, unfortunately it was out of season so we were unable to see it on this visit.
The park is home to a flock of Canada geese and a lot of grey squirrels as well as an art trail and a miniature railway.
On Thursday we started by walking around the harbour area so I could take some photos of the boats, lobster pots and pretty buildings nearby.
In the afternoon we headed to Pannet Park.
Pannet Park seems to be Georgian given some of the design features (although I don't know for sure).
Pannet Park is also home to many squirrels, and a small museum and tea rooms (although we didn't visit those this time).
Afterwards we went for Thai food.
Friday I had breakfast at Java (note: They do the best Vegetarian breakfasts in town), and then went for a look around the stalls at the Leisure Centre and The Spa for the Official Goth weekend.
In my opinion apart from a couple of exceptions the stalls in The Leisure Centre weren't as good as the ones from the previous week, and a lot of them didn't seem very "Goth" :/
There were some nice looking things in The Spa though.
Afterwards we came home.
