Our final leg of our trip included York and London, with a day trip to Cambridge. We started out by train from Edinburgh. This was the first train ride that had, well, issues. We got to ride seated for about an hour, but it turned out that it was a Bank holiday and we had neglected to reserve seats ahead of time, so we were bumped and ended up standing for the remaining one and a half hours. But that turned out to be ok, as we ended up standing with a couple who also hadn't reserved a seat. He was a retired university professor and the conversation was very good. He asked a lot of questions about the States, and we asked a lot about the UK.
We arrived in York, which, like every other town, was lovely. We stayed at the Grand York, which is a 5-star resort and easily the nicest place we stayed. Interestingly enough, it was also the cheapest! We had a porter who took our bags to our room which was an amazing room. Breakfast wasn't included and it was pretty pricey, so we ate breakfast wherever we could in town, which wasn't really all that bad.
York also boasts of Roman Walls that are easily navigable but we didn't walk on them on this trip. We did visit The Shambles. It's a street that dates to Medieval times, cobblestoned and lined with shops. The street is very narrow to keep light out because it was where the butchers were, so the meat wouldn't rot, well not as quickly anyhow. Now it's just a lot tourist shopping, but interesting nonetheless.
We spend a lot of time in the York Minster. A Minster differs from a Cathedral by who was in residence there. A cathedral was where a Bishop resided, while a minster is a more general term for a large or important church.
We had tea at Betty's. There are six different locations of the tea rooms. It is very "posh", the atmosphere and food were outstanding. There was a line about 20 deep (maybe more!) standing in the rain waiting to get in, and the wait was worth it.
We visited the York Castle Museum. It's housed in the former prisons, and while the part that showed the conditions prisoners had to endure was unsettling, the rest of the museum was good. One feature was a recreated Victorian street, complete with character actors. Lots of other good stuff there, with insights into how life was for various different social/economic levels. It really lent to a better understanding of the times.
York is also home to the Railroad Museum, a tribute to the role trains had and still have in the UK. We found that it is extremely easy to get around there using a number of different railroads, most notable ScotRail and the LNER. My father, who is a huge train fan, would have loved the museum!
I took a ton of pictures in all the museums, but due to the funky way the powers-that-be changed how to load pictures in this program, I can't figure out how to post them next to each other to get more on a page! Ugh. The limits to technology! Sometimes "improvements" aren't really! Ok, off THAT soapbox!
These last picture was taken in the Museum Gardens as we were walking back to our hotel. They have a Monet exhibit coming soon, so they had frames set up in strategic locations. But what caught my eye more than those was the scene here. It reminded me of Georges Surat's painting "
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte", which is easily one of my favorite paintings. I had the pleasure years ago of seeing it at the Art Institute of Chicago. It's massive, covers an entire wall. I stumbled several years ago the Stephen Sondheim play with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters which tells the story of the painting, and fell in love with not only the musical, but the painting as well.
And since this has gotten so long, I'm going to finish the trip in yet another blog entry of London and Cambridge, which should be my final entry! (But no promises, we'll see how it goes when I start writing!
