Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Museum Day in Charming York
Today's first picture is dinner tonight at a local pub! I had Angus Cottage Pie, and Chuck had a salmon-asparagus pie. We cleaned our plates and licked our chops.
Now, to the rest of the day... We've fallen under the spells of York - what a great spot this is! The weather is very cooperative as well, beautiful sunny days, with a couple more in the forecast.
Today we toured the rest of the city within the fortress walls, and visited: the National Railway Museum, Clifford's Tower, the Castle Museum, and the inside of York Minster. A+ day!
There are 4 pictures are from York Minster. It is an amazing place - huge and intricate at the same time -- hard to believe it was built in the 1200's. There is more medieval era stained glass in this cathedral than in all of the rest of England combined (that's what they told us). There is a pic of one of the many stained glass walls. We climbed the 275 steps up through a circular stone claustrophobia-inducing stairway, but the views from the top were spectacular as you can see in a couple of shots.
The 2 pictures of the lighter gray rounder building - one on the grassy hilltop and the other from the top looking down into the interior - are of Clifford's Tower, a castle structure from the 1100's. More great views from there.
Tomorrow we head northwest to the Lakes District. 2 trains and a bus will get us to Keswick for the next 2 nights. Weather looks great for hiking and birding. And that reminds me, despite this being museum and city day, I picked up another new bird -- a pair of Coal Tits (yes, that is what they are called Dad).
More later -
Ron
Monday, August 30, 2010
PICTURES and greetings from York, England
p.s. remember that you can click on a picture to blow it up. click again for second blow up , then 3rd click gets you back to normal size!
So we are here in York, and all is well. Flights to Iceland and then Manchester were fine (we had about a 4-hour sleep last night in Keflavik -- up at 445 am to get back to the airport for this morning's flight to England. Then, a 2-hour train ride to York -- which is a really nice, historic-in-the-classic-old-English-city-kind-of-way spot to hang our hats for a couple days.
There is a wonderful huge ancient Minster (church) that King Henry 8th actually attended and saved from demolition when he was separating HIS church from the Romans way back when. Also, the city is surrounded by a fortress wall constucted in the middle ages and which today is open to the public to walk, giving a nice birds eye* view of the old city.
*speaking of birds, I found my first new life bird today while wandering the streets -- Carrion Crow (cousin to our very own American version of crow). So while not a spectacular find, I'll take it.
More in a day or two. But for now, we just wanted to let family and friends know we are OK and we send our best from York...
Cheers!
R and C
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