Ken and Jan visit Great Britain: Day 5- Walls, Walks, and Whining

After yet another tasty(?) English breakfast, we had time just enough for a short walk on the walls of the city. We came out at the tiny Richard III Museum (we only went into the little gift shop)-- but there I found "The Old Nun's Prayer" which was new to me. I bought a $.60p (cents) copy of it. Check it out here:
Old Nun's Prayer
We saw some beautiful gardens and vistas from even just this short section of the walk. But York really is such a beautiful, interesting city-- we could spend a few more days here!

We got ourselves a Pike's drip at Starbucks (yes, I told the barista we were from there!), and then the first of a few curve balls today happened when a poor 84 yr-old man fell down on the treacherous stone walkway right in front of us as we waited for our 10:15am tour. Thankfully he recovered quite well, but he was still on the ground as our tour took off (he was being well attended)-- we heard the ambulance come as we left for the Museum Gardens where the oldest part of the Roman wall is located. A brilliant gentleman just spewed York history-- dates and details galore, helping us to grasp a little better the rich history of this land. The location around the Yorkshire Museum (we will visit tomorrow morning) is where the original hospital and crypts are-- and a small chapel remains. A few yards from there are the ruins of St. Mary's. The abbey was ruined in the late 1530's-- way to go, Reformers! I never completely understood the dark side of the Reformation-- the attempt to "cleanse" the church of all things Catholic. That crazy King Henry VIII. Ken is telling me to back off the history blah blah. I'm sure you'd rather hear about the important things, like what we ate, right?

The walk was almost 2.5 hours and we delicately disappeared after Holy Trinity Church, which was one of Ken's fave places so far. I'll let our pix tell the rest from our tour-- it was very helpful and interesting.

We were ready to eat after the walk, so we wandered on towards our next venue, The Castle Museum (a must-do in the R. Steve's Guidebook). We ducked into the Three Tuns Pub where Ken had another plate of fish and chips and I enjoyed Minestrone and fresh bread. This was tasty, but they had some kind of problem with their music (the pubs here mainly play 80's pop from the states-- our experience so far!) and we had to endure a "stuck" note for quite some time. Bother! The place cheered when it finally turned off!

Anyway, on to The Castle Museum which was fine-- have to say I don't quite agree with Rick on this being a "must do." But the area of Clifford's Tower area is interesting (and has a sad story about Jews killing themselves there much like the Masada story) and we learned a lot about York's justice system through the ages.

We also won't forget seeing a cheeky little boy there at the museum looking at a display of "wealthy Yorkshire people" (pictured left) and then saying, "Look, it's Jesus' family!" It's like he was our long-lost son! (I do miss our boys!)
We were completely on the other side of the city by that time and thought maybe we had enough time to walk another part of the wall to get to the Railway Museum. We hadn't originally planned to go there, but our walking tour guide said it was quite something.
Our B&B host also recommended it, so we started hoofing it that way. Ken took a cool timelapse of this section of our walk. What a beautiful city!

We got off the wall at the Micklegate Bar (bar = gate) and found a coffee shop ("Caffe La Tazzina") for a quick latte pick-me-up. We almost gave up on going to the Railway Museum but took a moment to read in our RS Guidebook that there is a little tram back to the Minster-- and our priority of the day was to get to the 5:15 Evensong. So we asked the barista there if we were close. We were so glad he encouraged us to press on. The Railway Museum was amazing and though we were there just long enough to snap these pix, we enjoyed seeing these gorgeous engines and railcars so much! It was like seeing "the real" characters from Thomas the Tank Engine!

Another curve ball-- the tram back to the Minster stops running at 4, so we had to hoof it to the Cathedral for the service. It really wasn't too bad of a walk-- and all for not, really. "No Evensong tonight. It's a children's choir concert." Seriously? Oh the irony! Rather than not get into the cathedral, we said we would like to attend, and it really was fun to watch the English parents excited to see their kiddos. I told Ken now you get to see how the parents are at your concerts... universally proud, picture-taking and waving mums and daddies. We will try to get the Minster tour in tomorrow before we head to Durham. We really want to see the "Undercroft" of this amazing church.

As we left the concert, we came upon the first rain of our trip. We figured we'd just go to our room and rest and ended up kicking back until after 8:30... dangerous for many reasons: 1) Jan's no fun when she's tired and hungry, and 2) It's hard to find a place that is still serving food after 9pm! We snuck into a pub that's tucked into "Exhibition Hotel at Bootham" and had a nice little meal (well, this picture will show it wasn't all that little-- and we weren't all that nice!).