We left on the train Saturday morning, bright and early and we got into York around 10am. Our little bed and breakfast was only a 10 minute walk from the train station and after dropping off our bags we headed out to explore the old town. The whole morning we could hear bells ringing and we just kind of headed toward where all the noise was coming from. Turns out it was coming from York Minister, a gigantic church in the middle of York.
We had lunch in a little cafe just outside the front steps of the church, listened to the bells and planned our attack on the tourist traps of York. First stop was the York Dungeon, a haunted house type place that specialized in dry ice smoke and people jumping out of dark corners at you. Here is the gentleman I met outside:
This guy thought he was pretty funny and kept on referring to Canada as "Canadia". He also made a lot of jokes about dating all the women in line and I thought he was actually pretty clever until we were leaving after the tour and I heard him using all the same jokes to the other people waiting to get in. Maybe he was working from a script.
After the dungeon we continued with the scary vacation theme and visited York's most haunted house. According to the brochure, a television crew ran screaming from this house a few years back because a guy said he was choked by an invisible hand. Suffice it to say, we survived. And didn't see any ghosts. But it was still a neat old house, lots of nooks and crannies and low doorways. Our B and B was sort of built the same way, winding staircases and additions all over the place. I find that I get lost in buildings a lot here, even at school. I'm thinking it's cause I'm used to the North American style of architecture, meaning everything is square and at right angles with each other and floors and rooms are numbered sequentially rather than with random letters and numbers (no joke - one of my classes is in a room numbered "n230.0a". It's on the 3rd floor).
But I digress.
So after the haunted house we had some dinner and then went off to meet up with Trevor Rooney, our guide for the Original York Ghost Walk. This was a super neat experience, as Trevor walked us through historic York and told us ghost stories about the buildings and alleyways. We finished up at a pub called the Black Swan which is supposedly VERY haunted. We had pints and Trevor told us one last ghost story. After the room was clearing out some (possibly drunk) women noticed our Canadian accents and invited us to their hotel room, the one they booked because it's the most haunted room in the hotel. There we learned these tipsy ladies practiced Wicca (the light version) and were really REALLY hoping to see a ghost tonight. We didn't stay long, but it was interesting.
Saturday night ended at a local drinking establishment where the 5 of us marveled at the shortness of the locals' skirts and the outfits of the groups out on fancy dress pub crawls. For example, look behind my new friends Kevin and Claire here, and you'll clearly see the lower cheeks of a young lady's bum.
Apparently you can wear a top in this country and call it a dress. Good times were had by all, however, and we went to bed tired and happy.
Sunday we went to the York Castle Museum, which surprisingly had very little to do with castles. They built a mock Victorian town that you can tour around in, complete with freaky statues in full Victorian dress and fake horses and carriages. This museum also had a display about the 1960s music culture and a fake dungeon from the 1700s. It was a very random and eclectic collection.
Before we caught the train home, we decided we were pretty hungry and we needed to indulge in the local cuisine. So of course we went for Sunday roast dinner, and dug into some very delicious roast beef, potatoes and yorkshire pudding.
After the dungeon we continued with the scary vacation theme and visited York's most haunted house. According to the brochure, a television crew ran screaming from this house a few years back because a guy said he was choked by an invisible hand. Suffice it to say, we survived. And didn't see any ghosts. But it was still a neat old house, lots of nooks and crannies and low doorways. Our B and B was sort of built the same way, winding staircases and additions all over the place. I find that I get lost in buildings a lot here, even at school. I'm thinking it's cause I'm used to the North American style of architecture, meaning everything is square and at right angles with each other and floors and rooms are numbered sequentially rather than with random letters and numbers (no joke - one of my classes is in a room numbered "n230.0a". It's on the 3rd floor).
But I digress.
So after the haunted house we had some dinner and then went off to meet up with Trevor Rooney, our guide for the Original York Ghost Walk. This was a super neat experience, as Trevor walked us through historic York and told us ghost stories about the buildings and alleyways. We finished up at a pub called the Black Swan which is supposedly VERY haunted. We had pints and Trevor told us one last ghost story. After the room was clearing out some (possibly drunk) women noticed our Canadian accents and invited us to their hotel room, the one they booked because it's the most haunted room in the hotel. There we learned these tipsy ladies practiced Wicca (the light version) and were really REALLY hoping to see a ghost tonight. We didn't stay long, but it was interesting.
Saturday night ended at a local drinking establishment where the 5 of us marveled at the shortness of the locals' skirts and the outfits of the groups out on fancy dress pub crawls. For example, look behind my new friends Kevin and Claire here, and you'll clearly see the lower cheeks of a young lady's bum.
Apparently you can wear a top in this country and call it a dress. Good times were had by all, however, and we went to bed tired and happy.
Sunday we went to the York Castle Museum, which surprisingly had very little to do with castles. They built a mock Victorian town that you can tour around in, complete with freaky statues in full Victorian dress and fake horses and carriages. This museum also had a display about the 1960s music culture and a fake dungeon from the 1700s. It was a very random and eclectic collection.
Before we caught the train home, we decided we were pretty hungry and we needed to indulge in the local cuisine. So of course we went for Sunday roast dinner, and dug into some very delicious roast beef, potatoes and yorkshire pudding.
Yorkshire pudding in York! Does life get any better?
Hopefully this isn't my last adventure... I'm pricing out Dublin next. You only live once, right?
Hopefully this isn't my last adventure... I'm pricing out Dublin next. You only live once, right?
4 comments:
SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
welllll, William Wallace sacked York in Braveheart. So there.
also -- get thee to Edinburgh..
Sounds fun, cool, etc.
I never had classrooms with letters, numbers, and decimals but I did have MIT classrooms named after obscure scientists. But they were very SQUARE.
Enjoy the times
i hope that yorkshire pudding tasted better than it looked.
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