York

Finally, we went to York. This may have been the coolest part of the trip, although it is difficult to say what was really the best part.

First and foremost, if I say nothing else: the York Minster. Seriously. This was a fantastically beautiful building, full of all kinds of neat stuff. It was on that site, for instance, that Constantine was first proclaimed Emperor of Rome. It has been the site of no fewer than three major churches, culminating in the largest and most beautiful building for miles around. It still has a crypt and catacombs beneath the cathedral which you can explore, full of old Roman and Saxon artifacts. Also, you can climb to the top of the tower, (a seriously grueling ordeal. Like, seriously. Most of the time, when they say that climbing a tower is difficult, they're just being nice. This was hard.) which affords you a beautiful view, though one that is entirely caged in. I guess because they don't want people falling off the tallest building for miles around, they have caged up the entire roof of the tower.

Also in York, we went to a Castle Museum which contained all kinds of fun stuff about the history of England, and had the best dinner of the entire trip. Also, we went to the Jorvik Viking museum, which is pretty darn neat, (about the Viking community of Jorvik which became the town of York) though it's not very big. Depressingly not very big, in fact.

Finally, in York, I bought a new chess set. It's really pretty.

So, that's pretty much our trip. It was a great deal of fun, though not all of it tells all that well. (Waxing romantic about the fantastic chicken wrapped in bacon that I ate in York is cool and all, but isn't really why you're reading this blog, I presume).

Pictures will be up pretty soon, whenever Erin gets around to it. She took all the pictures, since she has the multi-thousand dollar camera, and it seemed silly to carry two cameras and thereby take the same pictures a dozen times.