Day 6 - York

Okay, I hope I have not lost everyone reading our family blog. Am I boring you with my endless supply of pictures from my trip? I'm getting pretty bored myself! Let me just say we are getting close - bear with me, and I will soon be back to blogging about the rest of my family and the cute things my kids do, instead of picture after picture of me in front of different castles!

September 9, 2009 - We took a little drive in our rental car to York and listened to our Phantom of the Opera CD, singing along of course - probably very entertaining to people in cars we were zooming past (if they could see us - Mom really liked her fast Audi), and also listening to Ashley read "Wuthering Heights" to us in the backseat. She had a very entertaining reading voice, she even used the British dialect to make it more interesting. One of the most memorable moments of the trip for me, was interestingly enough not at a cool historic landmark, but in the car listening to Ashley read the part of a servant in the book named Joseph. I don't know how we lived to tell this tale because Mom and I were both laughing so hard, we were crying, and she was driving at least 75 miles an hour at the time. But it was so funny, that even though we were probably in mortal peril at the time, we didn't care, we just kept on laughing. Ask Ashley to read it for you sometime!

Anyway, we checked into our B&B, then toured York all day, did some shopping and eating, and saw the cathedral there, York minster.

Our B&B - The owner happened to be right out front washing his car as we pulled up. . . or tried to pull up, I should say. There was only parking along the street, so Mom had to parallel park (not so easy when the steering wheel is on the wrong side!). He looked pretty amused watching us, then finally came over to help direct us into the spot!

This is in downtown York - the streets are so cute and narrow - and apparently unsafe for clumsy Americans to walk on. We all tripped quite a bit on the cobblestone! I believe this shot of Ashley was taken in the famous "shambles".

York Minster - another gorgeous cathedral. This one was actually one of the most interesting places we went. When we went inside we noticed there was an underground museum, so we decided to check it out. Unfortunately, there were no cameras allowed, so I don't have pictures. I guess in the 70's, the foundations of the cathedral began to give out and large cracks started appearing on the structure. So digging began to build a new foundation, and some very cool discoveries were made. Apparently the current Cathedral was built right on top of 2 other, older structures. One was a smaller cathedral built in Norman times, and when it was leveled to build the larger York Minster, the same foundation was used. That's why it was not strong enough to support the current building. Then underneath that, they found bits and pieces of an ancient Roman fortess. It was really interesting. There were whole walls found intact, with paintings on them, and pottery and tools, and throughout the museum, there were models showing how the 3 buildings would overlap if they were all here today. Anyway, I'm probably boring everyone again. I just found it fascinating! I'm almost inspired to go out in my backyard and start digging to see what I can find!

This wall was built, according to our free guide (my Mom) was built by the Normans a looooong time ago. I think in the 5 or 600s, but again, she was a free guide, so....

Then that evening, Mom took a little break from walking and relaxed at the B&B while Ashley and I went on a very entertaining "Ghost Trail" tour of the city. Our guide was very funny and we were in a group of about 50 people, so it wasn't very scary, but it was fun.