From the moment we stepped foot in the city, we absolutely fell in love with York.  York is the second oldest city in England and, over time, has done an excellent job of preserving the city’s heritage and history.  With that in mind, the city is absolutely chocked full of character – narrow streets with overhanging shops, tiny passageways to other places, huge medieval structures, funky shops next door to very serious offices, and cobblestone everywhere. The city walls of York were constructed in medieval times and remain remarkably similar to their original design today.  The massive cathedral in York, appropriately titled, York Minster, is host to around 25% of England’s medieval stained glass collection and stands as a gothic beacon in the center of Old Town.  The city itself was founded by the Romans (although there was a tribe of native people living there when they arrived – they just ousted them and built a fort). In fact, many of the ancient Roman walls and roads still remain – all neat and tidy and straight. Then the Vikings came along and decided they liked that spot too, so they raided the place (on a catholic holiday too – the audacity!), built their own city there but it was a bit more carefree and curvacious (as Vikings tended to be). The Vikings named their city Jorvik (doesn’t that sound Viking?) and it grew to be the second largest settlement in Britian. They even minted money there. Then William came along, eventually conquered (and harried) everything, and it became a fortified Norman city with two castles (only one of two English cities with two castles) and a big old wall all around it. Turns out the British can’t say “Jorvik” so over time, the name changed to York. York is home to a lot of fascinating English history – the birthplace of Guy Fawkes (remember, remember?), York Castle is the site of a large Jewish massacre, it’s a major modern railway center and residence of a famous British legend (more on that later), home to the oldest surviving Catholic convent in all of Great Britian, and so very much more! Most importantly, for us anyway, York is also the location of the Jorvik Viking Center, created by the York Archaeological Trust and founded on a massive excavation site.

Our first tour of the city started late Tuesday evening in the area near the cathedral called “The Shambles” and was hosted by the delightful, and rather impressive, Mad Alice.  This was, in fact, the Bloody Tour of York.  We wound our way through the narrow streets and passageways, while Alice entertained us with scary and gruesome stories taken direclty from York’s colorful history.  She also gave us a lot of recommendations for things to do and places to visit while in York and we took her advice the next day when we visited the Bar Convent. 

The Bar Convent is the oldest surviving Catholic convent in Great Britian. It was established in the 1600s during a time when it was literally illegal to be Catholic. A group of nuns (now called “Congregation of Jesus”) opened this secret, hidden convent in a private residence they had purchased with a loan from the Catholic church. Mary Ward, the female founder of the church (is that foundress?), had this revolutionary idea that women should be educated equally to men and she believe that at some future point, women would contribute as much (or more) to society, science, education, discovery, technology, medicine, etc. After her death, which was particularly unpleasant, her convent started the first school for girls in the U.K. and now, there are 200+ coeducational schools worldwide in Mary’s name. Fun fact: Saint Margaret Clitherow, the Pearl of York, is a martyr for the Catholic church who was pressed to death because she was believed to have been hiding a priest and holding services in her home. Her hand, the only part of her that could be saved following her gruesome death, resides in the chapel of the Bar Convent (Mad Alice told us that story and we admit, it’s part of the reason why we wanted to go there).

Ok. So first thing you have to understand is: a gate is a street, a bar is a gate and a pub is a bar. Got it? Well, the City Walls Tour and Museum is located in Micklegate Bar. We stood on the street and looked around for literally 15 minutes before we realized the museum was actually IN the gate. (I would like add here that the Micklegate Pub being right there did not help us at all!) Remember? Bar = Gate. So you can hang around on Micklegate (Gate = street) all day long and never find the bar (gate; not pub!) unless you climb the stairs. Tourists! Anyway, first we explored the lovely little museum which is the entirety of the gate house structure that remains, and then, we took a lovely, and quite long, tour of the York city walls (City Wall Experience). It was nearly a private tour (I guess there were others who struggled with the gate/bar/pub thing and just gave up?) with only us and another family, Brits from Brighton. Here’s the deal: if you’re going to York and you can manage the stairs, we HIGHLY recommend this tour. You can literally see everything from the top of the walls and the very dry-humored and extremely well-informed, National Archives guide was absolutely fabulous.

That said, in my opinion, without question, the best museum we have visited so far is the National Railway Museum of York.  It’s a bit of an uncomfortable walk to get there now that the city is undergoing roadwork in the nearby area – but it’s absolutely worth it in the end.  It’s part of the Science Museum group in Britian and has an enormous collection (over 6,000 items) of everything even remotely related to the railway history (including a very large library and an archives you can tour). It is the largest museum of it’s type in all Great Britian and gets around half a million visitors per year. Coincidentally, this year is part of the 100th year anniversary celebration of the legendary Flying Scotsman, built in late 1923 for long-distance passenger service from London’s King’s Cross station to Edinburgh (Scotland). The Scotsman is perhaps one of the most famous steam engines in the world. Before her first retirement in 1963, she covered over 2 million miles on rail and set two world records: first steam engine to reach 100mph and longest non-stop run of a steam engine at 422 miles (in Australia – when she was on world tour). In addition, she has sailed the entire world! The Scotsman even spent time on tour in the U.S. before she finally was sold back to a British businessman in the 1970s.

The history of this amazing steam engine never fails to bring tears to my eyes. In 2004, afraid she would be sold for scrap or shipped off to some foreign land (again!), the National Railway Museum submitted their intention to bid for the Scotsman at auction. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough money. So they started the “Save our Scotsman” campaign, which resulted in a massive outpouring of public donations (many with letters of heartfelt stories and pleas – still on display in the museum), incredible contributions by the wealthy, the peerage, and even the Yorkshire Post newspaper – such that the museum was able to aquire her for 2.3 million British Pounds Sterling. After several years of overhauls, repairs and refurbishments, the beautiful Scotsman was returned to service in January 2016 with a special trip from King’s Cross to York. Thousands of people lined the route, waving and shouting as she passed, and the train was forced to stop more than once due to members of the public trespassing on the line and crowding for a view. We knew the Scotsman, along with the Duchess of Hamilton, the Mallard and the only Japanese Bullet train outside of Japan, Shinkansen, was housed in York at the museum, but we also knew that the Scotsman was slated for new custodial service and not scheduled to tour again until late 2024. However, something absolutely unexpected and epic happened to us at the museum – following the VR experience about the Flying Scottsman, we exited the room to the outdoors and were just about to re-enter the museum when all of a sudden a giant blast of steam and a massive locomotive blasted past us.  It was the Flying Scottsman herself!  What unbelievable timing!  We were literally astounded (gobsmacked, as one lady said) to watch her steam out of the railway museum and to her place at the actual rail depot as she awaited a long journey the following morning. What a staggering and wonderous suprise! We could not have planned that any better and could do nothing but chatter excitedly about it all afternoon.  

As I mentioned earlier, our main purpose in visiting York was the Jorvik Viking Center. It’s really more of an experience than a museum but it does hold a number of artifacts that were recovered from the dig at that site and provides a very interesting history of the excavation and research, which remains ongoing. We didn’t really learn anything new about Vikings, but we did really enjoy the experience. One word of caution: if you do visit the Jorvik, be aware that the experience, which includes an automated tour of a recreated Viking village, comes complete with period-accurate smells. Having spent some time at the Forensic Anthropology Center (a.k.a. body farm) in Tennessee in my early college years, I can assure you that the odors at the Jorvik are pretty darn close to accurate. We also visited Clifford’s tower (one of the two remaining York castles built by William the Conqueror) and the nearby area including the Castle Museum and Army Museum, rode two 100+ year-old carousels, and spent hours touring and adventuring in Barley Hall, a reconstructed medieval townhouse built in the 1300s in the center of York.  

We ate a lot of very interesting and very British food while in York and are really looking forward to more of the same in London over the next week. Wild Boar burger from the food truck vendor, meat pie in a pub, alcohol-free cordial drink made from Black Current, lots of tea (of course), pulled duck croquettes, some kind of caramel biscuit torte, and lots of chips.  

By the way, we landed in Manchester on our way from Sweden to York and we spent a few hours that first day at a local entertainment house called “Virtual Experience”.  We played Virtual Reality (VR) games with the latest equipment and had an incredibly fun time dancing, destroying fictional things, pretending to be Vikings, shooting imaginary arrows, and playing phony table tennis.  If you ever have a chance to play some VR games, even if only for a short while, I highly recommend it. I didn’t think I would enjoy it nearly as much as I did and, since it poured rain outside while we were indoors having the time of our lives, it was a win-win.