York

Even though we've lived in the UK for 7 and a half years now, we've never managed to make it up to York - we decided that before we left for good, that we should remediate this serious flaw.

We jumped on a train from Kings Cross station (which has recently been renovated by the way, and it's incredible!), and caught the train up to York. Once we got off the train, we checked out the station quickly. We proceeded to make our way to our hotel, stopping briefly by the river to sit down on a pier to have our sandwiches. After this we decided to go for a wander and check out the Old Town. There is a tiny street in the centre of the town called "The Shambles" which we went and checked out, then went to the York Minster. What an amazing structure. I would suggest it is one of the most fantastic churches I have ever set foot in, perhaps only beaten by St. Peter's. It was amazingly impressive. The undercroft tells a great story of the foundations of the building back to Roman times, and the relatively recent refooting of the building to support the weight of it. We both managed to get a cheap and quick Arch-bishopship. :-)

I went for a walk to the top of the tower and climbed 275 steps up a VERY narrow winding staircase. It was a lovely walk, and actually didn't take as long as they suggested. The view from the top was absolutely stunning, but the weather was a bit average, so the pics didn't work out so great. But hey-ho - it was a great walk.

The rest of it was brilliant.

The following day, we got up in the morning and went to the National Railway Museum. So awesome. It is such a fantastic museum. If you ever get the chance to go, you really should - entry is a 3 pound suggested donation, considering this it's an absolute bargain. I reckon it must have taken us a few hours to get through - checking out all the old royal carriages, and the massive Steam train collection. So cool. In the museum they have a heap of trains including the Mallard - the world's Steam Train speed record holder to this day. Also they usually have The Flying Scotsman, and have a large display on it, but it's off being completely restored at another workshop, so they have The Green Arrow in it's place, which was another train of the same type that ran the same route - interestingly there is no real answer to the question as to why the Flying Scotsman is as famous as it is, other than it was the first to run the non-stop London to Edinburgh route. But apart from these particularly famous ones, there's a whole bunch of other cool stuff to check out too.

Following this we decided to stop in the park nearby for a bite to eat. We ended up having leftover egg and chip sandwiches which was awesome - and as an added bonus I found 4 pounds on the ground near our park bench! Jackpot.

We then went for a walk around the town walls, around to the other side of the city, and went to a place called Clifford Tower which was an old fortress and was nice too.

Following this we went to a pub for dinner - Thomas's of York - and finally got our Beef and Ale pie we'd both been craving and it was epic!