Returning to York

Remember that I said we had no trouble getting to the comic convention. The trip back to York was another story. Picture first a very crowded subway (underground) with many of the riders in costume. Now picture us winding our way, up stairs and through various corridors at the Bank station to find the Northern line to get us back to the King's Cross train station. Okay, that wasn't really all that bad. There were no problems riding the Northern line and getting off at the right station. (Am I giving you a hint of things to come?) We grabbed some food at the station, me a Whopper(I know, I know), Meisha a panini, right before we noticed that the next train toward (another hint) York left at 19:00 (that's 7:00pm for us American types), ten minute away. No problem and we're on our way. Then we begin to hear the announcements indicating that this train did not go all the way to York and that there were some issues about lines being down and cancellations. Here's the part where I, George the "Great" Navigator, should have listened to Meisha. I was convinced we had to get off at Peterborough and Meisha thought it was the next stop. Meisha was right! The woman at the ticket office was clueless, there was no one at the information booth, and we had difficulty finding the right schedule for ourselves. Finally we figured out that the next train to Gratham, where we could catch the train to York, was leaving in about 20 minutes. We confirmed this with the conductor once we reached the right platform. Onward to Gratham! As we approach Gratham, Meisha noticed that the man in front of us was especially in a hurry to leave the train to catch another one. Her intuition told her that that was also the train we wanted. And, Yes! She was right, with me following cluelessly. This train was very crowded, so we couldn't sit together, but we did at least get to sit. There seemed to be an issue with passengers who wanted destinations north of Newcastle, i.e., Scotland, due to all the cancellations. The steward was trying to be very accommodating to these people but it was rather apparent that he was a bit out of his comfort zone and was frustrated that it had become his job to figure out how to get them where they wanted to go. As for us, as 22:00 (10:00pm) approached, we approached York station--approached very, very slowly for some reason. All in all, it only took about 45 minutes longer to get back than it took to get to London. But our story has yet to end: It started raining, the first rain we'd had all day despite it being very overcast the whole time, and once we went through Micklegate Bar, we encountered a whole new phenomena. All along the street, particularly outside every pub, were crowds of young--and not so young--people, with many of the women in odd outfits, mostly in pink and black. We could only guess that it had something to do with the fact that Monday is a spring Bank Holiday. We went right to bed!