Hooray for York!

Well. We love York. I could tell I would like it as soon as we left the train station. I wasn’t so sure in the train station though – I had garbage left over from our lunch on the train to throw away, and it took me 15 minutes of wandering around, and then finally asking someone, to realize that the York train station does not have trash cans. The girl I asked (who worked at a coffee stand and volunteered to throw away my trash for me) said that it was for security reasons, which makes sense – no bombs in trash cans. Or rubbish bins, as they call them here.

But anyway, we love York. We walked from the train station to our bed and breakfast, Number 34, and Amy and Jason were very nice to us when we staggered in with our luggage. Our room is really cute and faces the street, and we’re only about a 10-minute walk from the historic part of town. And by historic, I mean medieval – the part of town we’re staying in is either Georgian or Victorian I think, and certainly historic by American standards. To keep ourselves from falling asleep too early (which almost happened on the train), we walked town to the historic district and had a look around for about four hours.

The first thing we ran into was York Minster, the cathedral here. I think it’s the largest cathedral in northern England, but I’m not sure. It’s the seat of the Archbishop of York. We just came around and corner and there it was. We had to stand and gape for a few minutes. I’m including a picture of it – it is even more impressive in real life. Near the Minster is the Roman Column, which was part of the Roman headquarters in York 1900 years ago, and a statue of Emperor Constantine, who was proclaimed emperor here. I took an awesome picture of Cary taking a picture of himself with Constantine, and they’re inadvertently in exactly the same pose. It was great. We also walked around on the city wall, which surrounds the Minster. We were just so awed by A.) the beauty of the Minster, and B.) the beauty of everyone’s gardens we were looking down into.

We had an early dinner at the Royal Oak, an historic pub near the Minster. I tried a local ale, to which the bartender said, “Good girl!” It was really different from an American beer – not cold, not carbonated, but with a better flavor, I think. It was really mild going down and then really bitter three seconds later. It was something else. Cary had a lager (which is cold and carbonated), and we both ordered giant dinners of pub grub. Cary had some kind of beef and vegetables covered in gravy (a traditional cottage pie), and I had a chicken breast stuffed with cheese and wrapped in ham (or bacon, as they call it here). Not super-healthy, but very hearty. After dinner, we walked around some more, saw the Shambles (a medieval street, and the most cattywompus one I’ve ever seen – including a picture), and checked out the part of town where Yorkers (?) actually go. It was all really pretty – York has a lot of character. I found some interesting signs on buildings, which I’m including here – an advertisement for something called Bile Beans (ewww…), the British version of Dollar Tree, and a church that has been converted into St.Sebastian’s Centre for the Over-60s! Today I think we’re going to have lunch at a place on the Shambles called Mr. £andwich. Place-names and store-names here are so much fun!

We came back to Number 34 around 6:30 and struggled to stay up, finally giving up around 7:45. I kept waking up during the night though, and once I’d had a little sleep I was too excited to go back to sleep. So I’m still a little tired today, but I think I’ll live. It’s kind of rainy and cool today, so we’ll have to remember to bring our sweaters and rain jackets when we go out. Yay York!

I probably ought to go get a shower – our full English breakfast starts in about 40 minutes. I think it’ll be good, but I hope it won’t be too much food. Jason asked us yesterday if there’s anything different we’d like, but I was really too tired to think much, so I just said the English breakfast would be great. And I’m sure it will.

We’ll write more as soon as we can. We’re so glad y’all are reading. We’ll see you soon!

-Emily