Our first day in York began with a trip to York Minster, which is the largest Gothic church in England, and well known for its 128 stained glass windows. We had arranged for a group tour ahead of time, so after a quick breakfast at the hotel, we walked there as a group and were promptly met by one of the sisters at the church. I thought that she was looking at us with a bit of trepidation when we arrived, and seemed a little leery of giving a group tour to such a rowdy bunch (and I don’t think she had even noticed John at that point!), but she proved to be quite informative and equipped with a subtle and refined sense of humor (always appreciated when displayed by someone wearing such sensible shoes…). As she showed us the various stained glass windows, she told us how each window had been removed at the start of World War II, and buried under the city walls for the remainder of the war. It wasn’t until almost 1960 that they were all unearthed and reinstalled. She also explained that the church was originally used for purposes other than religious meetings, and one of the transepts had been especially constructed for hosting public meetings. She added that many of the choir boys used the space to play football, before the wooden pews that are there today were constructed. She also pointed out the ways in which the church and its contents had changed through the years and through various historical events (like the Reformation, where many of the heads and hands of the statues of saints were chopped off to eliminate details like halos and rosary beads, which identified them as saints, or the Victorian era, where a carving of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding Jesus was removed and replaced with one that showed her feeding Jesus with a bottle…)
The tour was excellent, and featured a little bit to interest everyone. Many of the students seemed to enjoy seeing the choir loft and the immense pipe organ, and others were taken with the stories told by the windows, and the details of the windows’ restoration through the years. Emma and John loved the stories of the carvings of animals, especially the one that depicted a monkey sitting atop a queen’s head with a firm grasp on her crown in an attempt to remove it. I was intrigued by the 1616 memorial to Jane Hodson, which was given to the church by her husband Phineas Hodson, in recognition of her as a “strenuous cultivar of piety, a faithful wife and a fruitful mother who raised with great care the children to whom she gave birth, after increasing the lineage of her husband by bearing twenty-four children.” Our tour guide pointed this out with a gleam in her eye, while I, as the only mother in our group, tried to hide my expression of utter horror at the idea of going through labor 24 times. I did notice that the memorial had been dedicated on the occasion of poor Jane’s death…at the age of 38! Certainly understandable…
At the end of our tour, most of our group chose to climb the 275 incredibly narrow and winding steps to the roof of the central tower. Molly and Loretta volunteered to stay back with Emma and John when the tour guide explained that their insurance policy wouldn’t cover children under 8. I pretended not to notice as she snuck a sideways glance at John, who was using the stone kneeling benches along the edge of the cathedral to launch himself into a double axel spin. The rest of us puffed up the steps, then enjoyed a fabulous view of the city of York from the top. At the bottom, our group took a quick tour of the crypt, then split up to find some lunch and explore the city a bit before dinner.
At this point, the four of us split off from the students and stopped in at a café for soup and sandwiches and a much needed shot of caffeine (for the adults, that is…the kids were all set with energy to spare!). Then we walked down the Shambles, which is an impossibly narrow flagstoned street lined with perilously leaning timber-framed houses and shops. We came upon a farmers’ market as well, and the kids each got a chocolate frog, while John was especially delighted to stumble upon a hot dog vendor. He walked slowly as he ate his hot dog, and pretended not to hear Emma’s exclamations about how disgusting it was! After our lunch, we went to Jorvik Viking Museum, which is a new exhibit built over an excavated site of a 10th century Viking settlement. The museum was clearly meant to appeal to kids and featured a Disneyworld-style ride through animatronic figures in Viking street scenes of thatched roof houses and panoramic views of the recreated city. As we got into the vehicles for the ride, each person was asked to choose a language in which to hear the tour, and one of the options was a young narrator who described the scenes from the perspective of a Viking child—a detail that was especially impressive to the kids. We all learned a bit about the Vikings, though it was mostly just good entertainment!
We then headed back to the hotel for a quick break. John and David played a game of pool with some of the students in the hotel bar, then when the students left for evensong at the cathedral, the four of us walked around the rest of the city walls that we hadn’t yet seen. John had used some of his travel money to buy a sword and shield at the Jorvik gift shop, so he charged ahead of us on the wall, then waited in every turret he came upon until we caught up to him, so that he could jump out and thrust his sword in our general direction—much to Emma’s great disgust. As dinner time neared, we climbed down from the wall and walked towards the Ousegate Bridge. On the way, David attempted to get some cash to cover the students’ lunches for the next few days, and the ATM machine ate his corporate credit card. Since we are putting all of the expenses of the trip on the card, I went into a minor (and admittedly unnecessary) panic as we walked to the restaurant (though I was wondering how we were going to pay the £400 restaurant bill). This caused John to burst into tears in the restaurant, and Emma to whisper in a tempered voice: “Could you both please stop panicking until dinner is over? You’re making it very hard for everyone to enjoy their meal!” David sent some emails on his Blackberry back to Colgate during dinner, and solved the problem, and we seated John at the other table, so he was surrounded on each side by ladies, and he happily chatted with them (and no doubt tried to show off to them as well) all through dinner. We didn’t hear a peep from him for the rest of the night!
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