Back and Forth Across the Pond

Our hotel was just about a block outside The Mickelgate, the main gate into the walled portion of York.  York's war memorial near the National Railway Museum. We grabbed lunch at the King's Arms. The pub is infamous for being the pub that floods. The River Ouse, which runs through York, is quite prone to flooding. So the pub's interior is designed in such a way that it can withstand the high waters. I snapped this pic of a photograph from a recent flood. The pub is the white building. It had been raining for a couple of days before we arrived, so the river was looking a bit high. I took the top pic from inside the pub. The other two are taken right outside.   This is Clifford's Tower, all that remains of the original York Castle built by William the Conqueror in 1068. It's a popular tourist attraction, yet it's one of the few places in York I have never visited. I mean, that's a lot of stairs! The York Castle Museum is housed in tw...

As I mentioned earlier, York is one of my favorite cities in Britain. Steve took me there during my first visit to the country in May 1999 and I instantly loved it. We don't visit every time we're over, but we still try to get there when we can. I had never been to the National Railway Museum and Steve hadn't been since he was a school boy, so we paid it a visit. How fitting that the National Railway Museum is inside an old railway station. Inside the main part of the station, where they house the royal trains and an array of passenger cars from over the years. In June 1842, Queen Victoria became the first British royal to travel by train. She must have liked the journey because in 1869 she commissioned a pair of coaches. She paid 1800 pounds of her own money and remains to this day the only monarch to pay for her train. These are photos of the rather pretty engine.  This is a replica of the 1829 Stephenson's Rocket built for the Science Mu...

We arrived in Newcastle in the late afternoon. We both had a hankering for pizza and, since we were staying in the city centre, headed out of the hotel on foot in search of a pizzeria. I think we searched for about an hour. Every pizza place Siri suggested (the iPhone assistant for those unfamiliar with this highly-touted and mostly useless feature of the iPhone) was a take-out dive. After wandering around most of downtown we decided to walk toward Quayside. It's an area along the waterfront that's supposed to be a real happening place. It was about a half-mile walk, but obviously downtown had no decent dine-in pizza places. We figured there had to be a pizza place in Quayside. We walked a couple of blocks and passed by a large indoor food court and, lo and behold, it contained a Pizza Hut! Siri never made a mention of it. We happily ducked in out of the freezing cold night and enjoyed a halfway decent pizza dinner. Perhaps it was the frustration in our pizza hunt, maybe it was...