Christmas 2007

Click on the photos for larger versions.

On December 27 we took the train from Edinburgh to York. We were really grateful for our first-class passes--the rail line had lost all the reservations, so standard class was a zoo, and a lot of people were standing. Luckily, we got seats. We arrived in York a little before lunch, dropped our bags at the hotel, and immediately went to ride the Yorkshire Wheel. Our ferris wheels got progressively larger throughout the trip.

The Wheel was right next to the National Railway Museum. Matt was a lot more into the trains than I was--I think he would have liked to hang around there longer, but I was hungry and cranky.

Here's the wheel itself. It was about twice as high as the ferris wheel in Edinburgh, and it had enclosed cars.

Here's a shot of the Minster from the wheel:

After that, we got lunch at a pub (of course), then we took a tour of the York Brewery. That was fun--the tour was interesting, and it included a pint of very good beer. After that we walked around York for a while and got lost about a dozen times.

We met one of my online friends and her husband for dinner; they took us to a little French bistro that had terrific food. Afterwards we wandered around for a while. Here's a not-so-terrific shot of the Minster at night. It's very dramatic, all lit up.

The next day we took a tour of the Jorvik Viking Centre, which was interesting, but I would have preferred more history and less archaeology. Definitely worth seeing, though. It's fascinating seeing all the remnants of the civilizations that have lived in York--Vikings, Romans, Saxons, Normans.

There was an open-air market, which surprised me--around here those are definitely a warm-weather activity.

And we saw a guy playing a piano right out on the sidewalk--also not something you'd see in Chicago in December.

We tried to walk the whole wall around York, but we didn't quite finish--they closed it a bit earlier than usual because it was raining. So we decided to stop in a pub for a beer instead. The whole day had been damp and chilly, and we were happy to be inside for a while. Finally, we caught a train to London.