Welcome to York! We visited this beautiful town often when I was younger. York has been around for 2,000 years; it's been passed down through the Romans, the Danes, to the Vikings... it's pretty old.
The first time I saw this place was when we visited the UK back in 2007. I was dating a young man named Austin Cooper at the time, and so I had my mom take a photo of me standing underneath this sign.... now almost 5 1/2 years later I am back, this time as Angela Cooper.
The York train station... beautiful building.
A bridge over the River Ouse. How do you pronounce "Ouse"? I have no idea.
York Minster
We are soooo happy to be here!
Betty's, a fancy cafe line in Yorkshire. Notice how the exterior of the building is not all too straight. Most of the shops on this particular street date back the to the 1700s, so cut the architect a bit of slack (he's been dead for 300+ years).
A fancy orange marzipan cake from Betty's.
The Shambles. This ancient street of the butchers of York was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086... It was rebuilt in 1400 AD when it assumed its present character.
Americans would have condemned this house decades ago... and that is why I love the British. These people know how to embrace antiquity.
A view of York Minster from the back.
The Treasurer's House. Before the Dissolution of the monasteries at the hand of Henry VIII (mid-1500s), York Minster stashed its treasures in this building. It was left vacant for many years until some wealthy families fixed it up and moved in.
One of the home's owners, Frank Green, had some rather eccentric ideas about historical interior decorating. He is famous for decorating the Treasurer's House very "anachromatically", meaning that each room is a mixture of all styles, such as Edwardian, Victorian, Renaissance, Tudor, Medieval,etc. (Notice the neoclassical white columns, timber beams from the Tudor era, etc)
Walking the famous Walls of York. York has always been surrounded some form of a wall. The first recorded wall was put up in the 1st century AD. The wall you see in this photo, the one that currently stands, was built much later than that... dunno exactly when.
Fountains Abbey.
Of all my memories of living in Yorkshire, this is my "happy place" (right up there with Valley Gardens, from an earlier post). We used to come here as a family for walks, picnics, etc.
The first recorded settlers, a group of monks, came to this area in the 1100s. By the 1500s, Fountains Abbey had become of the wealthiest Cistercian monastaries in England. Its wealth was far too tempting for Henry VIII, and when he dissolved the monasteries, he ravished Fountains Abbey. He took all the money, religious relics, and assets, and removed the roof so that the monks and laybrethren couldn't return.
The photo below is a picture of the interior of York Minster. This is what Fountains Abbey probably looked like back in the day before the roof was removed.
Years of wind, rain, sunshine, moss, and all other forms of erosion have reduced Fountains Abbey to what you see below.
For dinner, Maureen and Emma Hooson took us to Jinnah, an authentic Indian restaurant. That big white sailboat-booking-looking thing is Naan Bread. Our waiter brought it out like that, hanging from some standing-hook-device=thing. It was an excellent meal with excellent company.
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