Oh, The Days in York

Our last day in England was spent in York.  We hopped a train from Durham and spent another rainy day touring.  Of course, our first stop was the famous York Minster.  

The first church on this site was built around 627.  Since then, it has been destroyed and rebuilt and restored more than a few times.  Nevertheless, you can't help but be entranced by the beauty and history here.  

York Minster is the 2nd largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and contains the largest example of medieval stained glass in the world.  You can see it below.  It's the window above the entry doors and was created by John Thorton in the 15th century.  

The cathedral was filled with stunning examples of stained glass. 

The octagonal Chapter House as seen below was my favorite space in the cathedral.  The windows surrounding the room let in light and the stained glass provided colors that danced along the floors.  Along the canopies of the buttressed walls were thousands of individual carved heads.  No two were the same, but all portrayed mystery and thoughtfulness. 

After touring the actual cathedral, we decided to climb the central tower to get phenomenal views of York and the surrounding lands.  We climbed over 275 stairs, through tight spiral staircases, up past the gargoyles, rooftops, and stained glass windows.  Here I am below about halfway up the tower.  

The land surrounding York was beautiful farmland.  It was exactly what I imagined England would look like...cottages, farm animals, and pastures.  

This is more of the expansive views from the top, but it is more of the city.  

After climbing back down the staircase and eating lunch in a cute little tea house, we headed to The Shambles.  This street dates back to the 14th century and was an open air butcher shop and market.  There used to be over 25 butcher shops along here, but now there are none.  Back then, the scraps of fat, blood, and even body parts were thrown in the middle of the street in the gullies to be washed away by rain.  Ewww!

York was founded in 71 by Romans.  They created these walls to completely encase the city and protect it from invasion.  You can still walk along the ancient walls as I did below.  

This ends our tour of England.  Although, we almost got stuck here.  We had pre-purchased our train tickets and after a long day of touring and fighting the rain, we were tired.  We decided to head to the nearest theater for a movie.  After leaving the theater, we thought we'd play the dumb tourist card and hop on the next train back north to Durham.  Little did we know that while we were watching the movie, a huge storm had rolled through.  It had flooded the train tracks and stations, produced damaging lightening, and pretty much halted all transportation north.  After waiting and wondering for what seemed like hours in the station, we finally hopped a train back to Durham.  Luckily, we hired a cab for the ride to the airport the next morning and were happy to be on our way to Spain.