Here comes the sun, du..du..du..du, here comes the rain!

These are the remains of St. Mary's Abbey. The wall in the middle perpendicular to the longer wall on the side was where the central tower stood, just as high as the one we climbed in the Minster.

Emily kneeling behind one of the Roman coffins littered throughout the Museum Gardens.

Emily standing under the reconstructed arch that lead to the Chapter House of the Abbey. The column on the left was mostly original, while the one on the right was entirely reconstructed. If you enlarge the picture you can pick out the older stones that were used to model the rest.

Emily standing beside the statue of St. John the Evangelist that was part of one of the columns in the Chapter House.

Cary standing on the edge of the wall on the South end of town. You can see the Minster towers in the background. We could tell why York was the number two city of England - it was huge for a medieval city.

Emily cautiously standing under the drain for the toilet on the Fishergate Bar.

Emily posing in a part of the Museum Gardens. This picture is for Sheryl, Anna, and Marilyn.

Our last day in York was another busy one, but with a little more rest built in. After breakfast we went to the Yorkshire Museum, which is a little more traditional than the York Castle Museum. It had a lot more ancient artifacts. Emily was really pleased to be able to see all of the Roman artifacts that were found beneath the city during different building projects over the past two centuries. When planning the trip, York won out over Bath – though Emily really wanted to see Bath again with all of its Roman influence. As she has said several times, “if you get the chance to see something built by the Roman Empire, you just have to go see it!” I think her favorite was the mound of hair, complete with hair pens, that was found in a girl’s grave when the “new” railway station was built in the 1880s. Her exact words were, “I think this was the kind of girl I could have been friends with – the kind of girl who is buried with her curling iron!”

My favorite part was that it was built next to and on top of the remains of St. Mary’s Abbey – which used to be right outside the York City Wall. At its height, the central tower of the Abbey was as high as the central tower of the Minster – only about a mile away – but separated by two walls (the city wall and the Abbey wall). I’ve included a picture of all that is left of the Abbey itself. In the basement of the museum, there are the remains of the Chapter House of the Abbey. (It sort of reminded me of the museum built around the ruins at Jamestown in Virginia – I guess this is where they got the idea from.) The bottoms of a lot of the columns of the corridor leading to the Chapter House are still in place, and they have recreated the remains of others so that you can get a sense of the full effect. They also have several of the statues of Apostles and Biblical figures that were part of the columns of the room itself. Again, it is absolutely overwhelming to be standing there between two columns and know that 800 years ago, monks were walking right here, every day, to conduct the daily business of the Abbey. It is also really difficult for me to get a mental picture of what this all looked like without all the modern buildings and changes. There were some artists’ renderings to help – which are always fun for me.

When we came out into the Museum Gardens (which are the former Abbey grounds) there was a celebration of some sort going on with a Royal Army band and guns ready for a salute. We stayed for a few minutes and listened to them play some tunes like “I’m Getting Married in the Morning!” from My Fair Lady. I was kind of surprised to hear an army band playing that. While listening, we experienced the first of our many “short rain showers” of the day. Afterwards, we had another nice lunch in town and then went to Marks & Spencer for Emily to buy a hairdryer (Our York B&B has one, but she’ll need one as we progress through the trip). She was all set to pay £9.50 ($19.00) for it, when she found out at the register, that it was half-off. I don’t think we would’ve gotten a better deal than that at home.

For the afternoon we walked down to Monk Bar (Monk Gate, but in York “gate” means “street”, and “bar” means “gate”– blame the Vikings) and walked around the rest of the city wall. It was surprising how big medieval York was. I’m including a picture from when we were half-way round the wall so you can see how far we were from the Minster. It was kind of nice to spend some time alone without all the tourists and to see the parts of York that are more “real” and not just painted nice for the tourism industry. During all this quality time, we also had an interesting time finding where the wall was during the break between two gates where a giant lake used to be. Emily’s theory was this was how they used to confuse those wishing to invade the city – if you can’t find the wall, how are you going to invade?!? We also encountered the famous English weather. One minute it was raining (more a steady sprinkle) and was fairly chilly, then five minutes later we were pulling off layers as the sun came out and we were sweating in our rain coats. Next thing you know, more cloud cover and rain – then here comes the sun again. We repeated the process several times as we rambled the ramparts. At Fishergate Bar, I got a picture of Emily standing underneath what used to be a first floor (second American floor) toilet that stuck out the side of the building and emptied into the street. I guess that counted as indoor plumbing!

After an afternoon rest, we decided to go for an easy dinner at Pizza Hut. We figure it is a cultural experience to see how Pizza Hut differs in the UK – that is our story and we are sticking to it. Frank will just have to sigh at our lack of cultural adventure :-). We then decided to come back to the B&B and pack for tomorrow morning.

Cheers for now!

-Cary