York England - Part 1

Traveling in York - 2014
Gates to York

The main reason for us heading up to York was because my other half is a serious model railway enthusiast. Our coffee table at home houses tracks and locos. The whole setup actually works. Lights go on and his trains move around the track. A great way to start conversations in our house.

Train Museum
York has one of the biggest Model Railway Expos every year. My other half was all keen to visit the show. Not only that, York has the biggest railway museum in the world. And it's free! Sort of. They ask for a donation at the door. The train museum has so many trains and videos and information boards that you really need to put aside a fair amount of time to take it all in.

York is synonymous with the York Minster, Easter eggs and chocolate, Vikings, cats, trains, River Ouse, ghost tours, the Romans and Emperor Constantine who lived there. It's halfway between London and Scotland and was a favourite stop-over in days gone by.

We went by train from London's Kings Cross. Just arriving at York station is an attraction in itself. It's one of the most beautiful and well preserved Victorian railway stations in the
York Station
world.

We booked at our usual - IBIS Hotel, (no we don't get paid to say that). The IBIS in York is near the racecourse which turned out to be the venue for the Expo. We wanted to do a Park Run in York and that's also at the racecourse. So it was a good choice with hindsight. Park Runners will like the racecourse as it's flat. York have a big group. Park Runs occur every Saturday morning around the world for a timed 5 kilometre run. It's free, but you have to register and get a bar code.

Roman ruins
York is not a big place and we easily took in the sights on foot. Once we had checked in, we located the Tourism Info, loaded up on brochures and went back to the hotel to decide what to do. We had Internet in our room so also did a Google search on York.

We're both terrible at taking relaxing holidays. Every single trip, we do the same thing. We find out as much as we can, can't bear to choose and try to do it all. You would think with York being such a small place AND we had four nights at the hotel, that we would have had time to chill. But no.

York was originally called Yorvik by the Vikings who settled there. You can see where it gets it's modern name. They have a free tour every day given by volunteers. We figured that would be a great way to start. It was supposed to be 90 minutes but was more like two hours. Which was fine as we learned a LOT.


Church Goodramgate going back to 12th century
Apparently below the foundations of the city lie relics and artifacts that will never be recovered. Each time they excavate in York teams of archaeologists get involved as special items are discovered.

Read Part 2 - on this link.

Go to - My Holidays and Trips - at the top of this page to read about other places we have visited. Or just click on - this link.

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