York...Going Medieval

This was one of my less exciting, more standard adventures. So I decided one Wednesday to hop on the train to York, have heard that its beautiful, old, and features Diagon alley from Harry Potter.
When I got there, I had no idea that York was such a populated place. It was bustling and the train station was quite big.I had to cross over a couple bridges inside to get where I wanted to go.

Walking through York is liking walking back in time. Even the shops looked older than anything you'd find in Canada. Of course you've got you new shops, but that's to be expected.

My first stop was the York Minster cathedral. Now if I could say go see one thing in York, regardless of who you are, I'd say go see this. The place was absolutely massive. Easily the biggest cathedral/church I've ever stepped foot in. Besides the cost to enter, the place is pretty great. Everything is massive, and so nicely sculpted and setup! There are a lot of rooms and a cellar where you can see the foundation of the roman fortress that was there hundreds of years earlier. 

 I decided to take the tour of the tower (it's a long trip up). Before I did, there was a little "bake sale" going on in the corner for some charity. This is when I realized I was surrounded by an absolute mob of old people, "senior citizens" if you will. This may have scared any other off, but I went in for the baked goods. Having to have a conversation with one of the old people about their life story was easily worth the delicious goodies that these ladies could bake.

 By then it was time to head up the tower. There were a bunch of us that went up single file in the absolutely ridiculously narrow stairs (which were all uneven and different sizes). I made the mistake of letting an older person get in front of me and was stopped a few times on the climb up the few hundred stairs that were present. The top of the cathedral made for a really beautiful view that allowed you to see for miles! On the whole way up and down along the wall thousands of people have written their names and the year they visited. Same here brah, Emac is now part of York Minster history.

 The next stop was actually the one that was hyped up for me: Diagon Alley a.k.a "The Shambles". This was named the most picturesque street in Europe, and it lived up to the hype. It used to be the butchers street in medieval times. There would be meat hanging everywhere with blood dripping all over the place and dirty little medieval people putting their grubby hands on it. It was cool to see and was one of the most busy places hands down.

 On the way to find Clifford's tower (castle keep in York), I found this crazy road sign. I thought it was unreal so I took a knee and asked a lady to take the picture. She and many others seemed to wonder why I was so interested in getting a picture. If they have this many weird street names in Europe, then I guess it's going to be hard finding my way around! After the weird looks I quickly jogged off to find this damn tower.

I finally found it. Took some time and some hard core navigation (actually I followed a sign that read: "Clifford tower- left") but I made it. Seeing the keep surrounded by a hill was pretty cool. It was a lot higher up then I thought. After taking this photo to the left I also thought I could become Windows new default desktop background photographer. The keep wasn't as big as I thought but it was crazy to think how hard it was to build it on the hill and lug all the materials up.

Okay, that sums up my standard York experience. Next up the Paris blog (A little, make that a lot, less standard)

Peace!