York

Dena arrived from Portland. We met her at Paddington, zipped over to King’s Cross and caught a 2 hour train to York. On arriving, we were surprised that the boarding passengers gave us almost no chance to get off the train with our luggage. I literally had to rudely push through people who were giving us no chance to move. A big surprise for the normally respectful Brits. as we exited the station, we saw throngs of dressed up people. Once we got into a taxi, we asked the driver about these people. He said it was people who had come to York for the horse races - apparently a big drunken dress-up party. Explains the deboarding issues.

York is lovely. Our flat is just off one of the rivers and a short walk to the old town which is all narrow winding, mostly pedestrian streets filled with all sorts of shops. Also just a 15 minute walk to York Minster, the huge cathedral. Despite that cathedral, there are many other old, but smaller churches in the city. We have a tapas restaurant literally across the street, a couple of coffee shops within 5 minutes, groceries also close by. Really good location. The flat itself is in an old building, has pretty wonky, settled floors and is for the most part charming. The only glitch is that the hot water is funky. Sometimes it is hot. If it is not, there is a button in the kitchen that you have to press and wait 30 minutes for hot water - annoying, but not a deal breaker, I guess.

Our first full day we went to a Cold War era bunker for the Royal Observation Corps. Only one remaining in the UK Not a place to shelter, but a place for volunteers to monitor the course of a nuclear war. Note to Audrey: the main computer of this bunker is named AUDREY. We also took a tourist boat trip on the larger of the 2 rivers running through York. We also walked the old town and had a lovely lunch at a riverside restaurant. All touristy, but fun.

We also went to the Jorvik Viking center. A bit of a museum, but also a bit of touristy kitsch. Vikings settled the area for several hundred years. There have been numerous excavations by archeologists and one happens to be under a shopping mall that was built a number of years ago. So they put this museum at the bottom of the mall and you can see under the glass floor some of the old ruins. Jorvik, pronounced yor-vik, hence eventually York. Read more