York

Our first day in York, I haven’t been here since 1981 which is unfortunate because it is a beautiful city. The first stop was an old Cold War bunker designed to monitor nuclear blasts and fallout in the event of a nuclear war. A small but very good museum documenting recent history.

We also headed to the Jorvik Viking Center which Janet Maxwell suggested and it was excellent. I didn’t realize that the Vikings occupied about 50% of England for about 250 years.

We’re staying at a good B&B called The Grey Horse, which also serves as a pub. The owners invited us to watch the quarter finals of the European Cup which pitted England versus Italy.

So we headed down to the pub and watch the match which was terrific. David, in particular, enjoyed the spectacle. The owners said it would be raucous and it was with lots of shouting. Sadly, England lost as the match ended in a 0-0 tie and the match was decided on penalty kicks with the result being 4-2 in Italy’s favor.

Day 2 in York started a bit later than desired because we slept late which was fine. We visited Clifford’s Tower which dates back to the 1100s.

We ran across a owl and hawk demonstration and Alex help an owl.

We also visited the York Castle Museum which was surprisingly good. It featured a social history of York from the English Civil War to the present. Lots of armor and weapons which David enjoyed.

We walked along the city walls of York quite a bit. We’ll head back tomorrow (Tuesday) in the morning and check out a few more sites and then head to Cambridge. A great first stop on our trip and we could have easily spent another couple of days in York, a great city.