After the Dales we headed to York. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess in the past I’ve found towns with a lot of tourism to be a bit ‘junky’, full of tatty shops carrying kitschy knickknacks for tourists. But York was beautiful. A walled city with a spectacular cathedral (please, Elaine, it’s a ‘Minster’ – the tour guides all made a lot of that point), museums, abbeys, and lovely parks. The Minster has survived for centuries and sits smack dab in the middle of town. I am not a religious person, and I do recognize that churches have not always been the tranquil havens we think of today, but there is something both sobering and uplifting about wandering around a space like York Minster.
But, much like Orkney, York’s history extends waaay beyond the Minster, so we saw walls built by Romans and sacked by Vikings; church ruins picked over for their stones by Anglo-Saxons building houses and shops; and even office buildings from the 1960’s that our tour guide presented in a whole new light. At one point we were perching on what we thought were large rocks in the park, but turned out to be Roman building blocks.
The weather was fantastic, the patios were open, and we even did a boat cruise down the Ouse River. It was also Pride Week in York and it was nice to see flags and signs of support everywhere we looked. We saw a bit of the parade from the top of our Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour; it was a tad more low-key than Toronto’s parade (York is a city of ~200,000), but still very upbeat and festive. Oh, and as Kirkwall doesn’t have a Thai restaurant (good Indian & Chinese, but no Thai), we ate at Zaap Thai twice for lunch – delish!
I absolutely loved York – if I lived in Britain permanently, I could see myself coming back again and again. But there is still so much of the UK I want to see, and I’m already realizing that 2023 is looming. So while I won’t likely be back in Yorkshire again, I would recommend it to anyone and everyone – so glad we went!