We arrived in York around 3:15PM. We walked from the train station to our hotel. As we checked in we found we had been upgraded due to our Hilton Honors Gold status to a king room with a view of the castle out our window. Though, to call it a castle might be getting your hopes up too far. Still, it is directly out our window and quite nearby. We plan to climb up it tomorrow and look around.
This evening after checking in, we wandered out to look for some early dinner. York is charming, and we enjoyed our evening stroll through the shambles and the shops. I found a local chocolate shop and stocked up on a few chocolate bars. Yum!
We continued through the pedestrian area. It had narrow streets, a medieval feel, and reminded me of the old town area in Salzburg. There were copious Harry Potter shops. We had been in too much of a rush to go to the train platform 9 3/4 while at King’s Cross Station earlier today.
We walked back to the Minster and heard the choir rehearsing for evensong. The cathedral was very beautiful. The architecture extremely gothic. There was a bar in the park near there, but they didn’t serve food, so we kept looking.
We passed up a fish and chips place called Dukes a couple times because I wanted to sit down. Finally Bryan saw that there was a hallway back to a seating area. While we were there a large group of men came in and were loudly joking with one another in their thick northern accents. It made the meal that much more fun. I LOVE listening to people talk here! So much more entertaining than London. The fish was very good. The “chips” were okay. The card reader quit working on them and Bryan had to step outside to an ATM to get cash to pay for our meal.
We resumed our evening walk after that. We met up with a few locals randomly at a Pokémon Go raid and traded some of our Tauros (regional from the U.S.). One of the guys was really excited about the trade. It was fun to get to bring a bit of joy that way.
We came back to the room for a little rest after that, planning to go do a ghost tour a bit later on that we’d seen a sign for. But once off our feet, we decided we were better off resting in the room than traipsing about listening to ghost stories.
2025-02-07