Bus, Wall, Pavement, and Park: A Wander Around York

The heatwave finally came to an end on our final day in York. It was offered much appreciated relief. We had afternoon tea scheduled in the mid-afternoon, so we broke our day. The morning included an open-top bus tour and a wander along the city's medieval wall; and the afternoon included a stroll through a surprisingly expansive park.

We bought a ticket for one of the ubiquitous Hop On-Hop Off bus tours. Pretty much every major city has one of these. Heck, Inverness has one! The ticket is good for 24 hours, so you can actually use the bus as transport if you want. That had been our original intention, but we ended up just doing the hour-long tour and that was the end of it. But we enjoyed it. And I saw bits of York I had never seen before. And learned some interesting tidbits.

The tour was broadcast in English, but if you had headphones you could select other languages. Like Kids English and Yorkshire.

When the "bus" part of the day was over, we hit the "wall" part. York is surrounded by its original medieval wall, and you can walk along most of it. We took a bit of a stroll along one part.

Christa goofing off. You can't really tell in this photo, but there is a bit of a drop down to that grass. The grass was also very tall. So it was probably a good six feet, at least, to the ground from there. (A note about the shoes: Christa isn't normally in the habit of wearing day-glo trainers. She brought two pairs of flats with her that served her well for the first few days. But after our first full day in London, the shoes ripped her feet apart - literally. During our tour stop in Bath, we popped into a Primark where Christa bought these cheap, and yet stylish, shoes.)

York Minster in the background of this view along the wall.

That's a memorial cenotaph dedicated to the soldiers from York who lost their lives in World War I.

This is the Grand Hotel & Spa. We had afternoon tea here later in the day. It's very fancy.

Once we departed the wall, we hit the pavement (aka the sidewalk) and went to York Minster.

A bit of broken wall.

Later in the day, we wandered through this park.

That is a seriously fat squirrel. Well fed or pregnant?

A close-up of the tip of a monkey puzzle branch.

The park features the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey.

The abbey was once one of the richest monasteries in northern England.

The park was very pretty. It had a nice variety of open spaces, upon which many people lounged, and planted areas like this one.

You wouldn't necessarily know this big park was back here from the street.

After the park, we wandered through The Shambles, which is York's open-air market. Here's that sagging medieval building from an earlier post.

The skinny building directly to the left is The Golden Fleece pub. It's supposedly haunted.

Statues of cats have been put on York buildings for centuries. They were originally put there to deter mice and rats. Now they're just cool. Do you see the two cats in this photo?

Here's one.

And here's the other.

And finally, a photo of us during our afternoon tea. Christa wanted to experience the ritual. I picked the Grand Hotel & Spa because the menu was a little bit different and the hotel offered a nice variety of teas. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. This may become a regular thing when Christa visits.