Tea, Pasties, and the Vikings of York

A couple weekends ago I went to York with some of my lovely friends for what we thought was going to be a relaxing 3 day trip to Northern England.

Wrong.

Here are some highlights.

We walked the city walls for some great views of York Minster.

 

We walked along the river every day from our hostel into town.

 

We ate a lot of Cornish pasties and drank a lot of cider.

We visited the Church of the Holy Trinity, one of the few remaining churches to have box pews.

 

We went to the theatre!

We went to Betty’s, a Yorkshire institution, for cream tea.

 

We went to evensong at York Minster (because we were too cheap to shell out £8 to go inside). And it was lovely.

We went to a Viking museum.

We saw a costume exhibition, including Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet from the BBC “Pride and Prejudice” and King George VI and the Queen Mother from “The King’s Speech.” I may have touched it...it’s Colin Firth as George VI, I couldn’t help myself!

 

We went to the York Castle Museum, which Rick Steves says is one of Europe’s best.

Model Victorian street in the museum: so Rick.

And then it took us seven hours to get home. Did I mention that York is a 2.5 hour train ride from London? So the story goes that we got onto our 8.30 pm train and then sat at York station for an hour because of delays ahead. And then we moved on to the next station, yay! And sat there for an hour; moved forward a little and sat there for another hour. All the while my friends and I are calling our host parents so they don’t get worried and because, scary thought, the Underground will have stopped running by the time we get home at this rate. Luckily, the train company offered us all free taxis to our final destinations, citing their promise to get us from point A to point B, not just to the end station. Thank goodness!

So we got to King’s Cross Station at 2.00 am I think, and by the time our very nice cabbie dropped me, the final passenger, off at home (he waited on the street until I was safely in my house - whether all cabbies do this or not, it was very kind of him) it was 3.15am and I got to bed at 3.30. For those keeping score at home, that’s a full seven hours after we boarded the train. Good gracious. It’ll be funny sometime, right? Because even now I am glad not to have to get on a train for a while. Still, our York weekend was worth it. xo