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On the Move - York
I just can't believe how quickly this month is going!
I spent most of last week working on various projects and cleaning the
house. We did get out to see _About a Boy_, which we both enjoyed very
much. They had changed a lot of the details from the book, but really stuck
to the point and sense of it very well and Hugh Grant did a great job with
the lead role.
Our washing machine having decided once again to stop spinning the week
before, I had scheduled a tech to come look at it on Monday. He didn't
actually make it until Wednesday, which was a bit frustrating, and then
announced that it needed a new motor and timer and together with his time
that would cost two hundred quid. A quick call to the property manager
revealed that a new one would cost much less than that and he promised to
get on it right away. He called back in a few hours to say that the shop
wouldn't deliver until Saturday morning, would that be okay. When we said
no, he wrangled with them a bit and they agreed to do it first thing on
Friday morning, instead. They came through on their promise and the new
machine was installed and working by ten in the morning, so I was able to
have clean sheets for our next guest, after all.
Andrew Rose arrived on Friday evening. He's from New York City and is a
friend of a friend from California. Andrew is an artist and art historian,
who had been teaching in Spain for six weeks, followed by a week in Paris
and then a week in London on his own before his family arrive from L.A. this
Saturday. He's a fun, talkative, interesting person and we had a lovely
dinner together at YMing, which never fails to impress our guests. The head
waiter there has taken a personal interest in us and started lecturing us on
what to order and in what order to eat it, which is kind of fun.
On Saturday morning, Jason and I took the train up to York. Along the way,
our train came to a stop at one point and after a few minutes it was
explained that some kids had thrown stones at the front of the train and
shattered the outer layer of the windscreen. We proceeded at a reduced pace
to Peterborough, where we were able to switch to a different train and
continue our journey. Throughout the first part of the trip the many
children in the car had been very noisy and when we settled ourselves in the
new train, another family had taken the seats across from us, so we fled
into the next car, which had open seats and was much quieter.
We arrived in York about an hour late, around 12:30pm. We grabbed lunch at
a Pizza Express located on the ground floor of what we theorize was formerly
a grand hotel, on the banks of the River Ouse. We continued through the old
town and out the Monkbar (one of the gates in the wall that surrounds the
old town) to find our hotel--the Monkbar, as it happens--just around the
corner. We checked in and found our room to be very pleasant, with a
gorgeous four-poster bed.
Leaving our bags, we headed back into town towards the Jorvik Viking Centre.
Archeologists have unearthed a significant amount of material from the
Viking period of the town's history and the centre's exhibits about that
time are divided into four parts. First there is a fairly cheesy "time
travel" motion-movie bit that shows a couple proceeding back in time, their
clothing changing at each stop along the way. After that visitors are
loaded into cars--like the ones at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyworld--and
taken through a reconstruction of a section of the Viking town, complete
with riverfront, streets, shops, houses and backyards--complete with a man
straining in an outhouse. The lack of oxygen in the soil here has preserved
a remarkable amount of material for study. At the end of the ride is a
small exhibition hall explaining various aspects of Viking life in more
detail, with a young man in a reasonable facsimile of the clothing of a
Viking craftsman striking coins for the kids.
The last section is a bit difficult to describe in words. In a darker
hall, there were several glass cases displaying artifacts of the Vikings.
Each one was split on the diagonal by a two-way mirror. In front of the
mirror in each case was a collection of artifacts, artfully arranged on
black plinths and spot-lit. Every 20 seconds, the lights behind the mirror
would come on to reveal a scene in which this particular category of items
(toys, cooking implements, tools of various trades) might have been used,
with the reflections of the items fitting perfectly into the scene. This
was one of the most interesting forms of display we had ever seen.
Leaving the centre, we headed across town to the York Castle Museum. What
remains today of York Castle is Clifford's Tower (on the mound where William
the Conqueror first built a keep in 1068), the former Female Prison,
Debtors Prison, and the Court of Assizes. The former two
buildings--constructed in the 18th century--now house the museum. This was
based on the collection of a Dr. John Kirk, who wanted to chronicle the
changing face of domestic life that he saw around him at the turn of the
20th century. From this kernel, the museum has expanded to include two
reconstructions of street scenes--one Victorian, the other Edwardian,
several period rooms (a Victorian parlor, a 17th century dining hall, a
1950's front room, etc.), a collection of arms & armor,
historical/sociological exhibits about the impact of the Civil War and World
War II on York, collections of clothing and household goods over the past
300 years, a running water mill moved from elsewhere in the county, prison
cells and an exercise yard from the functioning era of the Debtors Prison.
It goes on and on and it's all remarkably interesting and well-presented.
After a few hours there, we climbed up to the top of Clifford's
Tower--or the shell thereof--to look out over the surrounding town. It is a
strange shape, like a four-leaf clover, leading to the local nickname, "The
Mince Pie," for its resemblance to a high meat pie.
By the time we were done there, we were beat, so we went back to the hotel
for a nap. Heading out again around seven, we walked the walls of the town
until they closed at dusk, then found our way along the River Foss and back
through the center of town until we found the restaurant we'd picked
earlier, The Limehouse. Jason chose the goat cheese salad, the fillet steak
with mushrooms and onions in a red wine sauce, and the "brandy snap basket
with pimms syllabub and strawberries," a concoction of crispy cookies, cream
and fruit, soaked in three different kinds of alcohol. My picks were the
scallops with garlic confit wrapped in filo; the pastry case filled with
fish, scallops, mussels and prawns in a dill cream sauce; and a couple of
scoops of vanilla and cinammon ice creams, with a glass of muscat to wash it
down. We agreed later that while it was an acceptable meal, each of the
dishes had fallen somewhat short of its potential mark, lacking the
finishing touch that would have made it great.
After a good night's sleep in our lovely bed, we started the next day with
breakfast at the hotel's buffet. We checked out, leaving our bags, and
heading along the town walls in the opposite direction from the one we'd
chosen the night before. That brought us around behind lovely gardens and
over to the York City Art Gallery. This was a better collection than we'd
expected. It included paintings from 1300-2000, a small collection of
studio pottery, and "Mechatronic Circus," a special exhibit consisting of
various scultures animated by sewing machines and other small motors.
From there we went through the former grounds of St. Mary's Abbey to the
Yorkshire Museum. This combines the functions of a science and local
history museum rolled into one, with exhibits about flight and the local
aquatic dinosaurs from the period when York was covered by a warm salty sea,
as well as displays of the artifacts and explanations of the events and
trends making up the complex history of the area. These included items
associated with the Brigantes, the Romans, the Britons, the Anglo-Saxons,
the Vikings, and the Normans, ending with a section detailing the history of
St. Mary's Abbey and including a spot where visitors can stand to look out
at the ruins of the abbey church.
Our last stop before lunch was the hall of the Merchant Adventurers Guild.
This is a gorgeous medieval building with interesting history about the
organization of traders who monopolized imports into York from the 14th to
19th centuries.
Then we tried to get lunch. We stopped at a Greek taverna, ordered food and
drinks, were brought our drinks, and then ignored completely for 30
minutes. At that point we asked if there were a problem and were told "is
coming soon." After another ten minutes, we said we'd like to pay for our
drinks and leave and the owner came out to our table, yelled at us, made
offensive remarks about our nationality and ordered us to leave his
restaurant and never return. Happy to oblige, we went on our way, the day's
mood somewhat soured.
We picked up Cornish pasties and ate them in a pretty little square as rain
began to spit down on us. We headed up to the Minster Area and went through
the Treasurer's House. Originally built for the Treasurer of the Minster,
the house was sold off after the post was discontinued during the
Dissolution. As the last holder of that office wrote, as all the treasure
was gone, there was no further need for a treasurer. The house was
massively renovated during the first part of the 20th century and the
National Trust now own and maintain it. There was a concert of Elizabethan
madrigals being performed in the gardens and we sat and listened to them
until the rain grew heavy enough to drive the singers indoors.
We took a brief detour into a nearby shopping street, where I had seen a
couple of dresses I was interested in trying. I started to have a very bad
headache, that was not improved either by retail therapy or the
administration of Advil, which we found at a nearby drug-store. Nonetheless
we headed over to the York Minster. We wandered around there for a while,
examining the nave and the chapter house. We went down into the crypt,
where there is an exhibit concerning the previous occupants of the site--a
Roman fortress, a Norman cathedral, etc. Sadly, my head was steadily
worsening and I needed to get outside, so we did not explore that area fully
and skipped climbing the tower.
Instead, we headed back to the hotel to use their facilities and sit for a
bit in a comfortable atmosphere. Jason found some decongestants for me and
my head slowly began to improve. We collected our bags and had a cab take
us down to the station. We were in time to catch the train before the one
we'd planned to take, but that one was very crowded and without reserved
seats, we couldn't be sure of sitting together. So we waited for the later
train and found our reserved seats. Instead of children, this time we were
kept awake by two girls gabbing on their cell-phones for almost the entire
trip, despite requests from other passengers to keep it down.
By the time we arrived back in London, my head was entirely better. We made
it home, had some pizza and watched a bit more of _Mansfield Park_ before
Andrew got home. We chatted with him for a bit and then I talked to my
parents, who were visiting my sisters in Boston for the weekend.
So that was our weekend in York. It went a bit sour just at the end, but
overall we had a lovely time and would recommend the place for a brief
visit.
I spent most of last week working on various projects and cleaning the
house. We did get out to see _About a Boy_, which we both enjoyed very
much. They had changed a lot of the details from the book, but really stuck
to the point and sense of it very well and Hugh Grant did a great job with
the lead role.
Our washing machine having decided once again to stop spinning the week
before, I had scheduled a tech to come look at it on Monday. He didn't
actually make it until Wednesday, which was a bit frustrating, and then
announced that it needed a new motor and timer and together with his time
that would cost two hundred quid. A quick call to the property manager
revealed that a new one would cost much less than that and he promised to
get on it right away. He called back in a few hours to say that the shop
wouldn't deliver until Saturday morning, would that be okay. When we said
no, he wrangled with them a bit and they agreed to do it first thing on
Friday morning, instead. They came through on their promise and the new
machine was installed and working by ten in the morning, so I was able to
have clean sheets for our next guest, after all.
Andrew Rose arrived on Friday evening. He's from New York City and is a
friend of a friend from California. Andrew is an artist and art historian,
who had been teaching in Spain for six weeks, followed by a week in Paris
and then a week in London on his own before his family arrive from L.A. this
Saturday. He's a fun, talkative, interesting person and we had a lovely
dinner together at YMing, which never fails to impress our guests. The head
waiter there has taken a personal interest in us and started lecturing us on
what to order and in what order to eat it, which is kind of fun.
On Saturday morning, Jason and I took the train up to York. Along the way,
our train came to a stop at one point and after a few minutes it was
explained that some kids had thrown stones at the front of the train and
shattered the outer layer of the windscreen. We proceeded at a reduced pace
to Peterborough, where we were able to switch to a different train and
continue our journey. Throughout the first part of the trip the many
children in the car had been very noisy and when we settled ourselves in the
new train, another family had taken the seats across from us, so we fled
into the next car, which had open seats and was much quieter.
We arrived in York about an hour late, around 12:30pm. We grabbed lunch at
a Pizza Express located on the ground floor of what we theorize was formerly
a grand hotel, on the banks of the River Ouse. We continued through the old
town and out the Monkbar (one of the gates in the wall that surrounds the
old town) to find our hotel--the Monkbar, as it happens--just around the
corner. We checked in and found our room to be very pleasant, with a
gorgeous four-poster bed.
Leaving our bags, we headed back into town towards the Jorvik Viking Centre.
Archeologists have unearthed a significant amount of material from the
Viking period of the town's history and the centre's exhibits about that
time are divided into four parts. First there is a fairly cheesy "time
travel" motion-movie bit that shows a couple proceeding back in time, their
clothing changing at each stop along the way. After that visitors are
loaded into cars--like the ones at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyworld--and
taken through a reconstruction of a section of the Viking town, complete
with riverfront, streets, shops, houses and backyards--complete with a man
straining in an outhouse. The lack of oxygen in the soil here has preserved
a remarkable amount of material for study. At the end of the ride is a
small exhibition hall explaining various aspects of Viking life in more
detail, with a young man in a reasonable facsimile of the clothing of a
Viking craftsman striking coins for the kids.
The last section is a bit difficult to describe in words. In a darker
hall, there were several glass cases displaying artifacts of the Vikings.
Each one was split on the diagonal by a two-way mirror. In front of the
mirror in each case was a collection of artifacts, artfully arranged on
black plinths and spot-lit. Every 20 seconds, the lights behind the mirror
would come on to reveal a scene in which this particular category of items
(toys, cooking implements, tools of various trades) might have been used,
with the reflections of the items fitting perfectly into the scene. This
was one of the most interesting forms of display we had ever seen.
Leaving the centre, we headed across town to the York Castle Museum. What
remains today of York Castle is Clifford's Tower (on the mound where William
the Conqueror first built a keep in 1068), the former Female Prison,
Debtors Prison, and the Court of Assizes. The former two
buildings--constructed in the 18th century--now house the museum. This was
based on the collection of a Dr. John Kirk, who wanted to chronicle the
changing face of domestic life that he saw around him at the turn of the
20th century. From this kernel, the museum has expanded to include two
reconstructions of street scenes--one Victorian, the other Edwardian,
several period rooms (a Victorian parlor, a 17th century dining hall, a
1950's front room, etc.), a collection of arms & armor,
historical/sociological exhibits about the impact of the Civil War and World
War II on York, collections of clothing and household goods over the past
300 years, a running water mill moved from elsewhere in the county, prison
cells and an exercise yard from the functioning era of the Debtors Prison.
It goes on and on and it's all remarkably interesting and well-presented.
After a few hours there, we climbed up to the top of Clifford's
Tower--or the shell thereof--to look out over the surrounding town. It is a
strange shape, like a four-leaf clover, leading to the local nickname, "The
Mince Pie," for its resemblance to a high meat pie.
By the time we were done there, we were beat, so we went back to the hotel
for a nap. Heading out again around seven, we walked the walls of the town
until they closed at dusk, then found our way along the River Foss and back
through the center of town until we found the restaurant we'd picked
earlier, The Limehouse. Jason chose the goat cheese salad, the fillet steak
with mushrooms and onions in a red wine sauce, and the "brandy snap basket
with pimms syllabub and strawberries," a concoction of crispy cookies, cream
and fruit, soaked in three different kinds of alcohol. My picks were the
scallops with garlic confit wrapped in filo; the pastry case filled with
fish, scallops, mussels and prawns in a dill cream sauce; and a couple of
scoops of vanilla and cinammon ice creams, with a glass of muscat to wash it
down. We agreed later that while it was an acceptable meal, each of the
dishes had fallen somewhat short of its potential mark, lacking the
finishing touch that would have made it great.
After a good night's sleep in our lovely bed, we started the next day with
breakfast at the hotel's buffet. We checked out, leaving our bags, and
heading along the town walls in the opposite direction from the one we'd
chosen the night before. That brought us around behind lovely gardens and
over to the York City Art Gallery. This was a better collection than we'd
expected. It included paintings from 1300-2000, a small collection of
studio pottery, and "Mechatronic Circus," a special exhibit consisting of
various scultures animated by sewing machines and other small motors.
From there we went through the former grounds of St. Mary's Abbey to the
Yorkshire Museum. This combines the functions of a science and local
history museum rolled into one, with exhibits about flight and the local
aquatic dinosaurs from the period when York was covered by a warm salty sea,
as well as displays of the artifacts and explanations of the events and
trends making up the complex history of the area. These included items
associated with the Brigantes, the Romans, the Britons, the Anglo-Saxons,
the Vikings, and the Normans, ending with a section detailing the history of
St. Mary's Abbey and including a spot where visitors can stand to look out
at the ruins of the abbey church.
Our last stop before lunch was the hall of the Merchant Adventurers Guild.
This is a gorgeous medieval building with interesting history about the
organization of traders who monopolized imports into York from the 14th to
19th centuries.
Then we tried to get lunch. We stopped at a Greek taverna, ordered food and
drinks, were brought our drinks, and then ignored completely for 30
minutes. At that point we asked if there were a problem and were told "is
coming soon." After another ten minutes, we said we'd like to pay for our
drinks and leave and the owner came out to our table, yelled at us, made
offensive remarks about our nationality and ordered us to leave his
restaurant and never return. Happy to oblige, we went on our way, the day's
mood somewhat soured.
We picked up Cornish pasties and ate them in a pretty little square as rain
began to spit down on us. We headed up to the Minster Area and went through
the Treasurer's House. Originally built for the Treasurer of the Minster,
the house was sold off after the post was discontinued during the
Dissolution. As the last holder of that office wrote, as all the treasure
was gone, there was no further need for a treasurer. The house was
massively renovated during the first part of the 20th century and the
National Trust now own and maintain it. There was a concert of Elizabethan
madrigals being performed in the gardens and we sat and listened to them
until the rain grew heavy enough to drive the singers indoors.
We took a brief detour into a nearby shopping street, where I had seen a
couple of dresses I was interested in trying. I started to have a very bad
headache, that was not improved either by retail therapy or the
administration of Advil, which we found at a nearby drug-store. Nonetheless
we headed over to the York Minster. We wandered around there for a while,
examining the nave and the chapter house. We went down into the crypt,
where there is an exhibit concerning the previous occupants of the site--a
Roman fortress, a Norman cathedral, etc. Sadly, my head was steadily
worsening and I needed to get outside, so we did not explore that area fully
and skipped climbing the tower.
Instead, we headed back to the hotel to use their facilities and sit for a
bit in a comfortable atmosphere. Jason found some decongestants for me and
my head slowly began to improve. We collected our bags and had a cab take
us down to the station. We were in time to catch the train before the one
we'd planned to take, but that one was very crowded and without reserved
seats, we couldn't be sure of sitting together. So we waited for the later
train and found our reserved seats. Instead of children, this time we were
kept awake by two girls gabbing on their cell-phones for almost the entire
trip, despite requests from other passengers to keep it down.
By the time we arrived back in London, my head was entirely better. We made
it home, had some pizza and watched a bit more of _Mansfield Park_ before
Andrew got home. We chatted with him for a bit and then I talked to my
parents, who were visiting my sisters in Boston for the weekend.
So that was our weekend in York. It went a bit sour just at the end, but
overall we had a lovely time and would recommend the place for a brief
visit.