York - August 17th and 18th

We left Robin Hood's Bay the morning of August 17th headed to York where Rich and I will stay until Saturday. Cindy, Judy, Pam ad Gary headed onward to Edinburgh where they'll spend Friday sightseeing and then fly home on Saturday. Rich and I will be continuing our England adventure until Monday, August 28th.

Once reaching York and checking into our B&B, our first priority was to find a laundromat as we hadn’t been able to wash out more than a few items by hand since Richmond and we had very few clean clothes left. Once that was accomplished and clothes folded and repacked we headed out to explore the historic city of York.

We visited the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey, built in the 11th century by William the Conquerer’s son and partially destroyed in the 16th century during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. We also walked part of the wall surrounding the old city, originally built by the Romans in the 1st century, ambled through numerous “snickleways” (basically narrow alleys), and explored The Shambles, a colorful old street that was once the “street of the butchers” where fresh carcasses hung from hooks outside the shops and blood ran down the street. The Shambles has been cleaned up since then and is now a very popular tourist destination.

On Friday we toured York Minster, the city’s pride and joy and the largest Gothic church north of the Alps. I had also booked a walking tour with a guide in the afternoon and, although we visited many of the same sights we had seen the day before, we learned so much more about York’s history. In the evening we attended a performance of “Sonnets at the Bar” put on by the York Theatre Royal. All in all, a very full two days.

Monk Bar - one of the old gates into the city











One of York's many "snickleways"

The Shambles was the inspiration for Harry Potter's 
Diagon Alley and shopkeepers here have
capitalized on it

Front view of York Minster


Looking down the nave inside the cathedral

The "Heart of York" window






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