Day 6 - York

To stave off the revolt, we slept in until 8 am.  We are going to have some early travel days coming up, so we will need the extra sleep.  

Breakfast at the hotel was cereal, yogurt, and tea.  For the hot section, we had soft boiled eggs and soldiers.  Just by its name I thought this was a kids dish, which one of the owners confirmed.  The toast is cut into strips ("soldiers") to dip the egg yolk in.  This was tasty, but it seemed like it was an activity for a bored kid.  It was the dunkeroos of English breakfast.

We started our day with a walk to Clifford's tower, which is one of the last standing parts of York Castle.  Once inside, we took some pics overlooking the city.  

Next we walked through York, stopping along the way to buy a winter hat.  It has been cold here, hovering in the 40's with stong winds that make it feel colder.  Next we walked through the York museum gardens.  Though it is cold, quite a few flowers were in bloom.  We also saw the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, which was once the largest monestary in Northern Britain.

Our walk continued outside of the city walls, over the river Ouse (pronounced ooze), to the National Rail Museum.  There were quite a few historic trains on display, such as the original Japanese bullet train.  They had an exhibit on the Flying Scotsman, which confused me more than anything.  The short story is that the Flying Scotsman is the train route between London and Edinburgh, and any locomotive or train that did the route was also called the Flying Scotsman.  Typically, the locomotives that did this route were the fastest available.  That being said, the exhibit made a very big deal that they preserved the Flying Scotsman, when there must have been at least hundreds of them.

After the museum we walked back into the walled city, near the minster.  We wanted to try a place that the nice girls at the hotel had mentioned that does baked goods (for Melissa) and beer (for yours truly).  We never made it there because we noticed that the place next door served bread and butter pudding, which I have been looking for since London.  

The place was a tea house called Bailey's.  I had a hot ham and cheese on a baguette.  M had a tuna and cucumber sandwich.  The bread pudding was good, though it was a bit dry for my taste.  I still like the one at Ladyface back home better.  Here it is, in all of her glory.

I should also note that tea houses are not the rage with the kids now-a-days.  We were the youngest people in there by a good 20-25 years.  I was scared to talk about the rock music and other new waves sweeping the nation.

On our way out of the restaurant I snapped another pic of the minster.  Yesterday I was not far away enough to get it all in frame.

Walking through town I saw the English version of the dollar store.  If you asked me, I think they were sitting on a gold mine if they named it Poundtown instead of Poundland.

My travel buddy wanted to take a chocolate tour, and I obliged.  York has a big history in chocolate making, most notably being where the Kit Kat bar was invented and manufactured.  The tour was fun, though it was a bit corny.

After the tour, Melissa bought a chocolate muffin at a bakery across kings square from the chocolate tour.  This muffin did not compare to the one in Bath, and she stopped eating it after 2 bites.  I was careful to not walk her past the bakery after this for fear she was going to throw a brick through their window or set fire to the building.

We had dinner at roast beef place that served Yorkshire pudding.  The place was a bit like a Boston Market, where they had a buffet where they carved the roasts in front if you.  The Yorkshire Pudding, a puff pastry cooked in beef fat, was not good.  The one I had was cold and dry, when I think they are supposed to be eaten straight out of the oven.  Even if this one was fresh, it may have not been spiced up right.

We walked around town after dinner.  My travel partner owed me a pub after all of the chocolate and desserts today.  Unfortunately, the good ones were packed, so we just enjoyed the walk through an ancient city center.  It was a Friday night and the skimpy outfits were out.  In the meantime, I had on 4 layers including my winter jacket and was still cold.