We arrived in York just as the sun was setting. We grabbed our rolly suitcases and headed into town, navigating by phone, to find our AirBnB flat, above a pub. After we settled in, we went down and wandered around the immediate area, trying to decide on where to go for dinner, and finally came back to our pub and ate there. It was very good, kind of gourmet pub-food!

Our flat had an entrance on the ground floor, where a little room had a clothes washer, and then the next floor had the bedroom and bath, and up one more was a living room/dining room/kitchen. It was quite roomy for us!

For some reason there was a small reflector telescope there, set up all wrong. I entertained myself by sorting it out. It wasn’t even pointing up!

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at our pub and headed out to catch the local volunteer guide tour. We met at the museum just outside the city walls. Although there is a modern part of York, we were staying in the historic portion, which is ancient, and is still mostly surrounded by medieval protective walls.

The guide took us to see some of the original Roman walls, topped by medieval walls.

In one place as we walked along the wall you could see where the moat used to be.

In the center of historic York is the Minster, which dates back to at least the 1200s. Obviously it took a very long time to build something that big! It looks amazing from every angle. It very much dominates the skyline.

At one point the tour group stopped in the shadow of the Minster while the guide told us about how the medieval stained glass windows were removed and shipped out to be hidden in countryside homes during WWII to protect them from bombing. We were freezing the whole time, because the Minster is so big it causes winds to blow down the sides of it.

When he let us go, we went back and explored inside the Minster. Unfortunately it was under restoration inside. I would have liked to be able to see it without all the scaffolding. Maybe next time.

Outside the city walls, near the museum, is what’s left of another church. Built in the 1200s, St Mary’s Abbey was torn down during King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539-ish.   I think this was one of my favorite things in York!

As we walked around it, we looked down and realized the footprint of the original building is clearly visible, and it was HUGE (as you can see in this view from Google Earth). The best part is that if you go into the museum next door, down in the basement you will find more of the Abbey preserved on display!

And back outside, if you walk around you will find the remnants of the wall that would have protected the Abbey grounds.

We just sat on a bench and rested for a bit and enjoyed looking at this and imagining what it must have looked like in it’s day.

With the big churches out of the way, lets go look around in town…

The whole trip:

England – Getting There

England – Bath

England – Stratford on Avon and Warwick Castle

England – York

England – York Part 2

England – London

England – London Part 2

England – London Part 3

We took the short ride to Stratford on Avon (I think it took us back through Reading again), and arrived there in the afternoon just as all the food carts and such in the square were winding down.

By the time we found our AirBnB (an unassuming black door in the midst of shops) and figured out how to get inside, and headed back out, everything was being packed away. We headed off in search of dinner, and ended up at a little pub, which seemed like a good idea, except they said they had a party coming in and the whole place was reserved, but they’d give us a table if we could eat fast and clear out! We had already wandered up and down the length of the street, and still without phone data to do any research, we went for it, and ate fast (though they were not all that fast getting the food to us, for being in such a hurry).

We retired to the flat to recover from the busy day.

Dave tried to sort out all the different forms of coins he had accumulated in his pocket, and figure out what they were worth.

Look at these ancient looking beams running through the apartment! They look hand-hewn. Otherwise, everything inside was modern. It was a very nice place to stay, and very quiet even though it was on a busy street.

The next morning we bought an umbrella at Boots, since we were getting some of that legendary English weather, and headed for Warwick to see a castle.

To do so, we hopped on a public bus. It was a nice ride, except the windows were fogging up. The countryside (that I could see) was lovely, and the little villages looked so cozy!

When we got to Warwick the bus driver pointed us in the general direction of the castle. Every town, it seems, has a spectacular church at its center.

We took a loop around the church to peek at the ancient gravestones.

We found the castle! It was HUGE, you couldn’t miss it.

Inside were displays of armor in the Great Hall, illustrating the castle’s medieval history.

The rooms around the Great Hall were decorated in Victorian style, and illustrated the lifestyle of the last owner, from the 1920s.

Dave even found a Lord Roberts, must have been an ancestor of his!

We went back out into the courtyard and went to explore the little castle on the hill – which I immediately decided was my favorite part.

Looking back at the main castle from the hill.

The beautiful countryside view from the top.

After we had wandered around the castle in the rain enough for our satisfaction, we headed back into town, and this interesting building(s) caught our eye. It is Lord Leycester Hospital, a charity for ex-servicepeople.

There has been a building there since 1126, but it says this group of buildings was built later, and you can see it says 1571 on the fireplace behind Dave. There is a little cafe there, and we slipped in for lunch. It was actually very nice, and the chef and his assistants were putting out some very nice lunches and fancy pastries.

The tea is growing on me. With a bit of sugar and cream, it’s downright tolerable.

We continued wandering around Warwick, marveling at the old homes, so different than the buildings we had seen in Bath. A person with OCD would never make it in this town, some of these houses didn’t have a straight line on them and leaned this way and that.

We took the bus back to Stratford on Avon, and after a bit of a rest, went out to a Thai place nearby that looked to be well reviewed. I honestly don’t remember much about it except we were seated at a micro-table right next to the cashier, which didn’t make for the most peaceful dinner.

The next morning we got everything cleaned up and checked out, and headed out to find a place for breakfast, duffel bags in hand again. We stopped at one of the few places that was open, hoping to get some hot food. We still were not getting used to the idea of a place to eat with no table service, but we seated ourselves, and looked over the menu, and Dave went up and ordered our food.

We had ordered hot cocoa, and he came back with two mugs, and chocolate on a stick to swirl in the hot milk – it was like a hot cocoa kit! Weird! Then they brought the food, which was sub-par. Weirdest thing was Dave went to use the restroom, and he said it contained the biggest condom machine he had ever seen!

We wandered around a bit more and landed back at a Starbucks near our flat. I used to think when I got to England, I would never go to a Starbucks, because they are everywhere here, but Starbucks started to feel like a welcome bit of home.

I was getting tired of dragging my duffel bag everywhere, and I didn’t want to carry it any further, but it would have been nice to do a little more exploring, so I looked up luggage online, and as soon as the department store across the street opened, we went over and picked up some new suitcases

– with wheels!

Now that we were free to roll our burdens around, we headed up to take a peek at the church  where Shakespeare was buried. We could not go inside, but we admired the outside.

We sat by the river and watched carp fishermen setting up their gear, and people rowing up and down the river. There were lots of swans, and we watched the boatmen getting the tourist boats ready for the day ahead.

I took this nice picture of the rowboats tied up at the dock. That will make a nice piece of art.

Then we headed over to the Royal Shakespeare Company theater.

We had tried to see a show there the day before, but were unable to. But this day we got to check our bags and take a little tour and see a bunch of costumes and set design displays.

Finally we rolled by Shakespeare’s birthplace before heading back to the train station for the next leg of our journey. Luckily by now we had figured out the reservation system, so we had seats for the entire trip, and watched a couple episodes of The Crown on the iPad to pass the time.

Although we enjoyed Warwick, we found Stratford on Avon a bit over-rated and touristy for our taste. Next stop: York.

The whole trip:

England – Getting There

England – Bath

England – Stratford on Avon and Warwick Castle

England – York

England – York Part 2

England – London

England – London Part 2

England – London Part 3

Portland to London to Bath

We have never been overseas before. Our only trips outside the country have been to Vancouver, BC, and that is basically just like home, but bigger. So we saved up my vacation time this year and planned a trip in the fall, after the crazy summer vacation season was over, to England.

We planned to follow the two week trip outlined in Rick Steve’s Best of England book, but modified a bit for our interests and how much time we had to spend. We didn’t have quite two weeks so we shortened it up a bit. We aimed to include some local theater as we went. We spent lots of time pouring over maps and reading travel journals, and ended up deciding to fly to London and go directly to Bath, as Rick recommends, then on to Stratford on Avon to see Shakespeare’s hometown, and Warwick Castle (can’t go to England and NOT see a castle), then on to York, to see some of the countryside from my beloved James Herriot books, then back to London to finally experience the big city. Dave organized trains to get us from one place to another.

We arrived at the Portland Airport all ready for our adventure. Dave insisted we take the required airport carpet shot.

And our chariot awaits!

We had a LONG flight ahead of us  – 9 hours, 4500 miles, or thereabouts. I was a bit nervous about it, because I have never been in a tube hurtling over the ocean in the middle of the night before.

This made it all more bearable. Particularly since once we crossed over into Canada we couldn’t see anything out the window because of the clouds.

The next morning we landed in London, got through customs pretty quickly, and were off on our adventure! As soon as we could get out of the airport. To do that we would use our train tickets, and get our train discount pass, which we couldn’t get sent to us in the US, but websites had indicated all we had to do was pick it up once we arrived. But we soon found out you couldn’t pick it up in Heathrow, and in fact the people there didn’t think we could get one at all. ‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘you have to mail away for that, you can’t just go get one!’ But someone suggested we take the train out of the airport and get off at our first stop and talk to the train office there, and hopefully if anyone asked us for our pass before that they would be merciful. So we did just that. And sure enough at the first stop there was a train office, and we asked the guy if we could get a pass and he handed us a long piece of paper to fill out. Dave said ‘can we get it today?’ and the guy was like ‘sure, I’ll make it right up for you’! Whew! First Problem, solved!

Soon we were back on the train, and a short ride later we were in Reading on a layover, waiting for our train to Bath. Reading was not on our itinerary, but we had a bit of time to walk around, and so it was the first place in England we really saw. We didn’t even really get a glimpse of London as we zipped away on the train. We were amazed by the cool old buildings mixed in with new ones in Reading.

We stopped for some hot cocoa to pass the time at a Starbucks while Dave tried to get our phone working with the UK Simm card. That would soon become Problem Number 2. It turned out our unlocked Samsung was a US -only model, and apparently could not talk to the UK network. We found this out after spending much of our Reading layover hanging out in a ‘3’ store while they tried to help us get it working. Their final conclusion was that that phone was not going to work for us, and since our other phones were still locked to AT&T, we would have to buy another phone that would work, or go without.

We grabbed some lunch in the train station (a real pastie!) and headed on to Bath. We had a bit of trouble because we had reserved seats, but people were sitting in them. We weren’t even sure we were in the right cars. Loading on the train happened fast! We found places to sit, but it was kind of awkward. Luckily it was a short trip. Soon we were in beautiful Bath.

We had to walk about a mile to our AirBnB, hauling our duffle bags over our shoulders. It was feeling like a bit of a marathon at that point. There was so much to see! But we bee-lined it to our new home for the next few days. Bath is full of Georgian townhomes, many of them in long lines all right together. Ours was in one of these (I took this photo a couple days later, it was pretty gloomy the day we arrived) Count up 6 chimneys, and it was the green door. We were up on the very very top floor.

It was very cute inside, all modern, and it had a lovely view of the hills.

Dave found this on the nightstand, which was cool because he had just finished doing a play of Baskerville.

So, here we were, in a new town, halfway (well, a third of the way maybe) around the planet, in a different time zone, wide awake while our friends at home were still in bed. Crazy! I think we had an early dinner somewhere, then went to bed and crashed, because although it was barely evening here, our bodies thought it was something like 4AM. There would be plenty of time to explore tomorrow!

The whole trip:

England – Getting There

England – Bath

England – Stratford on Avon and Warwick Castle

England – York

England – York Part 2

England – London

England – London Part 2

England – London Part 3