24 Hours in York

Our train trip to York was relaxing, and I was pleased that there were a number of hen parties on the train with us (middle-age ladies festooned in tiaras and sashes that marked some rite of passage or occasion like “Bride to Be” or “30^th birthday” or “Yummy Mummy on Parade”). They were making so much noise that our fellow passengers didn’t notice our group, despite the students’ tendencies to be quite unaware of how loud they are and Leah’s lack of concern overall about both the volume of her voice and of the Peppa Pig show she was streaming on my tablet. Leah actually loved everything about the three hour ride…the sheep out the window, the enormous bag of baps and crisps and grapes that we brought along, and especially the toilet, which was a cavernous round cubicle that opened and closed with a flashy push-button. This she requested to visit about four times, though by the time we traveled down the aisle and through the adjoining car, then push-buttoned the door open, then closed, then open again, then closed again, then finally locked, she no longer had to go.

She had been a real trooper all morning, despite the last-minute flurry of activity in our house as we packed and loaded our car, checked and double checked train tickets and email confirmations, and counted students and tracked text messages about who was on which taxi to where. Once we had everything sorted and were driving out of our car park behind the students’ taxis, Leah looked out the window and said, “Wooo! Buh-bye Scot-end!” We all laughed, though none of us broke it to her that we were still coming back!

Leah charms one of our students at the hotel.

We arrived at the lovely York train station (no sarcasm intended…it actually is lovely!) at 1:00 pm and dragged our luggage to the hotel nearby. It was the same place to which we took our students in 2011, though it was now owned by a new firm, and the robin’s egg blue walls I admired the last time were now done in hot pink. But the location was still great, and the price was still right for a large group. The top floor room that we got was the same one in which we stayed in 2011, though it now only had three beds in it instead of four. Leah was going to sleep on an airbed anyway, but that did mean that we had to put Emma down in the women’s dorm. She didn’t mind, because she is getting along very well with the students since she’s actually only five years younger than they are, and as we walk through the towns she spends more time with the other students than she does with me.

David and the students (and Emma) went off after checkin for a 3pm tour of York Minster. I didn’t go because I assumed that neither Leah nor John would love a 90 minute tour of a Gothic cathedral. Instead I took them to the York Castle Museum, which is housed in a former debtors prison and tells the story of the city through various time periods. There’s a recreation of a Victorian street, complete with shops, schools, churches and homes that the kids can tour, and another recreation of World War 1 trenches on the other side of the museum. The trenches included some narrow-hidey holes that were just Leah’s size, and we spent a good bit of time trying to fish her out of those. Eventually, the sound of machine gun fire that the museum was piping in was enough to draw her out, and we were able to move on. There were other exhibits about the prisons themselves, and in each cell there was a projected image of a prisoner, telling his or her story about why he or she was there and what the prison conditions were like. It was very well done, but Leah found it a bit ominous so she wanted to hurry through the cells. John on the other hand was quite taken at the personal stories and the manners in which they were to be executed and was more interested in lingering. I managed to delay Leah in a colorful exhibit about the 1960’s and Beatlemania long enough for John to catch back up with us.

Leah in front of York Minster

The three of us left the museum when it closed and walked to the York Minster for evensong. We arrived in time to wave to the group at the very top of the Minster tower. When they came down and rejoined us, we all filtered into the choir, where evensong was going to take place. A merciful usher seated our family right next to an exit. Leah made it almost all the way through the hour-long service by playing alternately with her shoes, her fingers, and the Book of Common Prayer. Eventually, even she had had enough of the chorus, and announced in a very loud whisper that she had a dirty nappy. Incidentally, if you ever happen to be in York Minster with a toddler, make note that the changing rooms on the left-hand side of the main altar are very well equipped!

After evensong, we had a group dinner with the students at an Italian chain that was in a converted church. This is a pretty common site in York, though some of them have been turned into shops or even nightclubs rather than restaurants. It is a telling symbol of the changing importance of religious practice (and food!) in British culture. The chain had left a good number of the architectural features intact, though they had replaced the pulpit and the pews with sleek white tables and stainless steel bars along the ends of the room. Though it was a chain, most of the waiters were Italian and the food was surprisingly good. Almost everyone ended up with some kind of pizza, though a few students chose risotto instead. For a crowd of college kids on the first night of spring break, they were all a bit subdued, though it was possibly because David had assigned a rather large paper and a number of them had been working on it late into the night the night before. At eight, I left with most of them to go on a “ghost tour” of York, while David stayed back with the kids, and the student that looked most exhausted, to finish the pudding that had come with the kids’ meals and to pay the bill.

The “ghost tour” is a popular pastime in almost all large British cities…even St. Andrews has an outfit that offers them. I usually shy away from this kind of thing, since I’m not too into murder or mayhem. However, this one seemed to get some excellent reviews online, and was apparently run by a pair who are relatively serious at historic research…or as serious as a pair running a ghost tour outfit can be, I guess. Our tour guide was fantastic, well informed, funny and appropriated dramatic but never hokey. He took us to some fairly interesting spots and shared as much history of the city as he did stories of executions and haunted pubs. In fact, the only thing actually scary about the tour were the roving bands of bachelorettes and wannabe bachelorettes out on parade in stiletto heels, feather boas, rhinestone tiaras  that kept passing our group and cackling in a ghosty-falsetto voice. It made me supremely pleased that the whole hen-party tradition seems not to have made it across the Atlantic yet…except perhaps at Halloween.

Clifford's Tower in York

In the morning, we had yet another tour, but this one was of the center city of York and didn’t involve any ghosts or stilettos. Our tour guide was a former librarian who brought along a collection of very old texts, maps, historic photos and coins to illustrate the history of the town as we walked. He took us along the very high stone city walls (which was interesting to navigate with a stroller!) and through many of the streets, and told the group about the Roman and Viking influences on the city. He also talked a bit about the history of the city since it had discovered tourism, and how some of the poorer areas had been gentrified. That was clear as we walked, and passed even more historic churches that had been converted into High Street British chains like Joules and Jack Wills and Boots. Since it was a Sunday, the cobblestoned streets (or newly re-cobblestoned, as our guide pointed out) were full of families, tourists, and street performers. One of our students ended up as the assistant in a knife demonstration at one point, but it happened at the same time that Emma wanted to duck into the Cath Kidston, and so fortunately I missed it and only had to fret about it while watching the replay on the students’ phones.

After our tour and a bit of free time to wander the streets and the market, we met at a pub (again, haunted) for a Sunday roast. All the students had either the traditional beef roast, complete with Yorkshire puddings, mashed potatoes AND roasted potatoes (!), cabbage, peas, cauliflower and carrots, though a few requested the vegetarian nut-loaf version instead. It was a lot of food for the middle of the day, and so after we ate and returned to the hotel to retrieve our luggage and board the bus I noticed that almost all of them fell asleep almost immediately!