Day #15
Walk around York
This hotel does not server breakfast which makes things easier for us. We get up late and starting exploring York. We first go to the Post Office to unload. While there the public phone box inside rings and Amy answers it (lol). They said that an emergency call was made from the phone, and did she need help. Amy says that she is in a post office. At this point a lady tells us that her son made a crank call so Amy hangs up. The mother then starts ripping into her kid. This reminds me of Type I and Type II errors in statistics. Do you want the kid to err in favour of ringing 999 (their emergency number - don’t quote me on that!) more than they should or less than they should? (It’s a double-edged sword having kids knowing the emergency number so well).
Amy is feeling peckish now, so we go to a shop that sells ribs (yes, York seems to have a much wider variety of food than other places). Unfortunately the shop is closed and she is disappointed. I wanted to go to Pizza Hut but got overruled :( (apparently Amy is trying to keep me away from Pizza until Italy) and we went to Mark & Spencer instead (which has a café sort of like Myers Café).
Merchant Adventurers Hall
After Brunch, we wander around the streets and come to a historic building called the Merchant Adventurers Hall. This building was constructed in the 13th century when York was a busy trading port. It housed a guild called the "Merchant Adventurers". They were originally called "Guild of our lord Jesus Christ and our lady Mary" (or something like that) but someone (I think it was Queen Elizabeth I) later changed their name (rightly so) to the more trade-oriented "Merchant Adventurers". It had paintings on the walls of the hall of each governor from 16th century and even had some paintings of unknown people on the walls as well. Underneath the hall was a room for housing the poor. One thing weird about the hall was the fact the floor wasn’t level (it sloped upwards quite considerably to the walls). I don’t know if this was bowing of the timber over time or whether the original builders didn’t try too hard to make it flat. This place was wonderful to look through.
York Castle Museum
At the merchant hall we got a tourist map to York and I used to this to get to York Castle Museum. York Castle Museum is a museum built on the remains of an old castle. The museum is well organised and takes you through the life of an English person/family from the 16th century to today. (for example, it had a section called "From the Cradle to the Grave" which showed everything from swaddling to wedding dresses to funeral garb). The museum also focused on the 200 year anniversary of abolition of slavery in UK (that is getting a lot of press her) and makes a call-to-arms to stop the continuing slavery that goes on today (apparently young African girls get offers to come England to become nurses but get kidnapped into the sex-slave trade). The cool thing about this museum (which I didn’t like about the British Museum) is that this museum is very simulation style. For example they will have a whole room done up as an 18th century kitchen. At one stage you walk through a 19th century village (not that I noticed that much difference to that and some modern English villages ;). In this 19th century village they even had people "role-playing" behind the counters in the shops.
Clifford's Tower
As the last past of our tour of the York Castle Museum we climbed up to Clifford's Tower (which is a Mott and Bailey). This tower is somewhat ruins, but still has some cool things (like the circular stairs). From the top we can see all over York (including the Eye of York - like the London Eye, but I don’t think I will get to go on it :( )
Train to Keighley/Bus to Howath
It was now getting late, and so we went back to the Queens Hotel and picked up our luggage. We then got a cab back to York station (the cab was driven by a young woman which is something you would never see in Australia).
Check-in at Ashmount
After another trip that involved a train to leeds/change platform/train to keighley (pronounced Keethly)/drag luggage to bus stop/bus to Howath, we finally arrived at "Bronte country". For those of you who are not literary inclined, the Bronte sisters (Emily, Charlotte, Anne) where 3 famous writers of the 18th(19th?) century (they had a brother somewhere there too). They wrote books like "Wuthering Heights" (some of you might know the Kate Bush song ;), "Jane Eyre" and others.
They grew up here, and there is a Bronte Parsonage Museum nearby which we will be looking at tomorrow.
Tonight we went down to the "Old White Lion" pub for dinner. I had a roast dinner and Amy had a steak & kidney pie. I had a pint of "Tetley Ale". One of the waitresses noted that we were Australian and was excited because she was going to do a tour of Australia in about a month or two. She said she was going to go fruit-picking, and I joked that the fruit-pickers never made money because they blew it down the pub at night. She said that wouldn’t be her problem as she was sick to death of pubs (having worked in one for so long).
After dinner we walked through the streets of (what I assume is) Bronte Village. It is a narrow cobble-stone street with crowded buildings on each side. There is several pubs here and a lot of noise is coming out of them so combined with the cold outside there is quite a bit of ambience here.
Sleep
We eventually come back to our room and enjoy the outdoor hot-tub for 30 min (it is funny to be in 39 deg C water while the air is about 5 deg C. The owner said the hot-tub is best experienced when it is snowing) then retired to our room. The room has cable and so we watched a BBC3 program about the 50 worst pop songs of all times (Things like "Say Say Say" featured prominently in here [in fact a few of Paul McCartney duets did]. They did rip into Vienna by Ultravox - which I like).
