York, GB (06Nov-7Nov)

Thursday morning the 6Th we boarded the train to York. We left at 7:30a for the two and half hour journey. Arrived in York in the rain, checked into the hotel (The Royal York hotel), located right next door to the station. Great room, really big, dropped off our luggage and then off to explore. We got on the sightseeing bus (hop on,hop off), to see all the sites. We rode it all the way around so would know what there was. Lori got off at the hotel and took a nap. Rick and I venture into town, visited the outside of the Cathedral, as we thought we should wait for Lori to visit the inside, walked all thru the downtown area, the Shambles, wondered thru the market and checked out the shops. Headed back to the hotel to collect Lori. Collected her and ventured back into town, went into the Cathedral, wondered thru town, stopped for dinner at the Roman Bath's pub, good food. Walked the long way back to the hotel to relax for the evening. On Friday, we joined a free 2 hour tour from the tourist center. It is guided by local who have lived in the area. Was a great tour and saw lots that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. We visited Roman and Medieval ruins - you can see the columns and coffins from the Romans. Saw the Abby walls that are left along with the story of the Abby. We then walked the wall that still remains around the town of York, descended off the wall at the Monk Bar (a "Bar" is a gate and a "Gate" is a street in York), visited the Old Trinity church, which was small old church, had the original beams and the lighting was real candles. Then on to The shambles street, be sure to look at the pictures as the building go up, but come out over the floor below. Very interesting. At the end of the tour we headed back to toward the station to visit the rail museum which was free, it was cool, as they had a large number of engines and passenger trains from way back, they had the royal coach train which was retired in 1977. Was really neat to look inside at how they were furnished so long ago. Some of them were very old. We then collected our luggage from the hotel to board the train to take us to Edinburgh. The train was pretty full, met some very interesting people, mostly college students either headed home for the weekend or to Edinburgh to watch the New Zealand & Scottish game. The trip went fast as they kept us all entertained