July 26 – Train Mess and York, England

We caught our cab relatively early for our drive to King’s Cross Station to catch our train to York.  We had a bit of time so we hit the Harry Potter shop to buy Liam a wand (he lost the one he had picked up at the Harry Potter studios).

Unfortunately, our train (and trains all over southern England) was badly delayed due to damage to some overhead power lines.  So, we took the Tube over to Eustace station and caught another train.  The situation was a bit of an annoyance and we were over two hours late getting to York.  But we made it just fine.   

We caught a cab to our hotel (right across from Clifford’s Castle)...

and then headed into the old section of town (just around the corner from our hotel) for our timed tickets to the Jorvak Viking Museum.  The Museum turned out to be a ride through the recreation of a Viking Village.  The local archaeologists have been doing a lot of excavations of the local Viking village and much of the village and the people are based on their findings.  It was quite interesting and informative. 

We saw a demonstration where they struck a metal to make a coin.  Interesting.

From there we decided to walk around Old York.  It is a lovely warren of narrow, windy streets and alleys with beautiful very old buildings.  It was like walking through time. 

We had two days of great wanderings in the old city of York.  We have never been here before and thoroughly love the old section of town.  It screams Middle Ages 

We made our way over to York Minster, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe.  Unfortunately, it was closed for the day by the time we got there. 

We had dinner at the Guy Fawkes pub and then made our way back to the hotel for the night.