This
morning, we set out from
Manchester to visit the big old
Minster at York. This was a spectacular drive past Leeds on the
M60,
M62, and
M1, through a back town with narrow stone roads, and flying by the seat of our pants to a park and ride. This may seem like boring trip report
minutiae but it is seriously a big deal for us. York
Minster is breathtaking. There are more little bits of medieval glass in this building than in the rest of the world. They actually pulled all the windows during WWII, stored 'em in houses in the region, and put them back in when Hitler was defeated.
After stopping for a peppered steak pasty (
meat!),
we went on a walking tour of York where we heard about how the Romans, then the Vikings, then the Anglo Saxons, then the Normans, then the House of York, and then the Tudors, and then the and then the etc. built here. And it's all sitting in town. It was also super windy and since we're nearly out on the
moors, you can easily imagine how Jane Eyre would have heard Mr. Rochester calling her name, saving her from a super boring trip with that loser St. John Rivers. We also saw where Dame Judy Dench (
M in Bond or really, Jean of As Time Goes By fame) got her acting start at the age of 15. But the real story today is getting to the hotel. For the past three nights, it is taking an average of two hours to find the hotel once were within ten minutes. How is this possible? How can we be so daft? Well, as I said for Birmingham, the hotel and the car park were three blocks apart in the middle of a complicated scramble of one-way streets. For Manchester, a shocking (Seattle-like) lack of street signs meant that we had to double back twice for each of the five roads we had to find. And for Harrogate, just outside York, this one's really good. The google directions led us to an apartment building set back off the street across from a hardware store. After going down all four arms of a central roundabout, we finally parked, jogged across a park, tracked down three policemen, and found that our hotel was just down the road with the only sign for the hotel in the back alley. It's not that we're Americans, Brits in line at the reception also said that it took them just as long to find it. I really love an adventure and a challenge. Tomorrow we're going to Edinburgh. The goal? Find the hotel in under 90 minutes! (Pictures to come, the internet is slow tonight.)
This morning, we set out from Manchester to visit the big old Minster at York. This was a spectacular drive past Leeds on the M60, M62, and M1, through a back town with narrow stone roads, and flying by the seat of our pants to a park and ride. This may seem like boring trip report minutiae but it is seriously a big deal for us. York Minster is breathtaking. There are more little bits of medieval glass in this building than in the rest of the world. They actually pulled all the windows during WWII, stored 'em in houses in the region, and put them back in when Hitler was defeated. 
After stopping for a peppered steak pasty (meat!), 
we went on a walking tour of York where we heard about how the Romans, then the Vikings, then the Anglo Saxons, then the Normans, then the House of York, and then the Tudors, and then the and then the etc. built here. And it's all sitting in town. It was also super windy and since we're nearly out on the moors, you can easily imagine how Jane Eyre would have heard Mr. Rochester calling her name, saving her from a super boring trip with that loser St. John Rivers. We also saw where Dame Judy Dench (M in Bond or really, Jean of As Time Goes By fame) got her acting start at the age of 15. But the real story today is getting to the hotel. For the past three nights, it is taking an average of two hours to find the hotel once were within ten minutes. How is this possible? How can we be so daft? Well, as I said for Birmingham, the hotel and the car park were three blocks apart in the middle of a complicated scramble of one-way streets. For Manchester, a shocking (Seattle-like) lack of street signs meant that we had to double back twice for each of the five roads we had to find. And for Harrogate, just outside York, this one's really good. The google directions led us to an apartment building set back off the street across from a hardware store. After going down all four arms of a central roundabout, we finally parked, jogged across a park, tracked down three policemen, and found that our hotel was just down the road with the only sign for the hotel in the back alley. It's not that we're Americans, Brits in line at the reception also said that it took them just as long to find it. I really love an adventure and a challenge. Tomorrow we're going to Edinburgh. The goal? Find the hotel in under 90 minutes! (Pictures to come, the internet is slow tonight.)
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