Day One in York

We were up bright and early Monday morning to catch the train to York. We splurged on first-class seats on a Virgin East Coast train, so we traveled in comfort and arrived fed and ready for our day. York, like London, was hot that first day. It was also busy. But nowhere near as busy as London.

We slogged our bags up and over a bridge to get to our hotel. It was way too early to check in, so we just left our bags and headed out into the city.

Our path took us through Mickelgate, where we stumbled upon this lovely church, Holy Trinity Mickelgate. Since we had nowhere specific we needed to be until the afternoon, we decided to pop inside and have a look around.

One of the lovely stained-glass windows. Holy Trinity has a long history: It was founded prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and is listed as one of the five major churches in the north (along with York Minster) in the Domesday Book. Although it is now a Church of England, it was re-founded in 1089 as a Benedictine priory. The church was expanded at that time, becoming a double church: One to serve the monks and the other the local community.

It had a lovely, homey feel to it. And look at those timber beams!

A final shot of the outside.

A shot of the River Ouse. See that brick building on the right? It was (and may still be, I didn't look) the Queens Arms Hotel. Steve and I stayed there many years ago when it was first opened.

A closer look at the other bank. The second building from the left is the Kings Arms pub. It's known as the "pub that floods." The River Ouse has a habit of breaking its banks. The pub has adapted to that eventuality, and has a sign inside marking the water levels of the various floods. We popped in for lunch, but they weren't serving food. So we had a couple of soft drinks.

This is a photo from the web illustrating one of the floods.

A street shot. I like the brick buildings.

You can always tell which are the medieval houses by the bowing.

This is St. Helen Stonegate, a medieval church in the heart of York.

This is Clifford's Tower, the largest remaining part of York Castle, which was the center of government for the north of England. This stone tower was built in during the 13th Century.

Another shot of St. Helen Stonegate.

This is St. Wilfrid's Catholic Church. It sits across from York Minster. It was opened in 1864.

And this is York Minster. We explored this incredible church the following day.

We went inside St. Wilfrid's to have a look around.

This is the air conditioner in our room. Yes, you read that right. That's our air conditioner. Needless to say, it didn't do much of anything. It didn't even blow cold air. So the room just stayed hot. I had hoped the cooling outdoor temperatures (the heatwave that had been plaguing us was ending that night) would help. We had two fans in the room, after all. Alas it did not. The room was a sauna. Of course, the next morning after a miserable night the girl at the front desk offers to give us a different room. It would have been nice to have been offered that the day before. But no matter, the hotel made good on its good sleep guarantee and we received a refund for the one bad night. And we moved to a nice, cold room for the rest of our stay.