A Few Thoughts… August 13

Before I get to my explorations in York, I have a few thoughts. You see some things here that you would absolutely never see in the US. On Sunday night when we arrived we went to a proper English pub for dinner. I think I talked about it in one of my earlier posts. What I didn’t mention was the little girl I saw in there. I didn’t mention it earlier, but I went to that same pub for dinner last night and there was an even younger little boy in there. The little boy was just kind of wandering around and I kind of tracked his progress around the pub until he wound up back with his family. He was probably five or so. The little girl I saw the other night was actually sitting up on the bar while daddy ordered a couple of pints. It’s just alien how comfortable they are with alcohol. The kids grow up sitting on bars or running around pubs while mummy and daddy tie a couple on. Strange.

I learned something sort of funny about language today. In York the streets are called gates, the gates are called bars, and the bars are called pubs.

The drivers in this town are mad. Not angry mad, crazy mad. Mad, but very polite. They don’t seem to have the same problems with idiot drivers that we see in the States. They merge nicely. They don’t run red lights. They get very close to each other. While I was on the bus today we passed another bus. Both were going about 30 mph at the time. I could have reached out and high-fived one of the other busses passengers if they had had their hand out and I wanted to see how well the doctors here could treat a broken arm. One thing about the bus drivers though, they all think they’re Mario Andretti’s little brother. We were tearing ass through residential neighborhoods and the bus drivers were letting out their inner Speed Racer in a bad way. Oh, yeah. One other thing about driving in the UK. The yellow lights work both ways here. What I mean is that you’ve got your standard and familiar green-yellow-red pattern, but you’ve also got a red-yellow-green pattern. The red light stays on, but the yellow light flashes a few moments before it turns green. If it’s flashing, you can go. I guess it just means "go, but be careful."

Kids run around freely here with no parents. I saw two different groups of kids taking the bus from one place to another with no parents to watch them. The oldest may have been about 13, but the youngest was probably five. And no, these kids weren’t necessarily together, and no, their parents weren’t on the bus with them because they got off alone. That doesn’t count the eight or nine year olds I see walking through the City Centre on their way somewhere. These English people are very trusting.

I started off later than I expected today. I had planned to get up at 9:00 and go exploring. Just an aside, but have I mentioned that they use the 24-hour clock over here. It’s a little tough telling time at night for me. The television has a clock on it, but it’s a 24-hour clock, so at 5:00 in the afternoon I have to try to puzzle out what 17:00 means. I’m really kind of out of practice with that, even though my last job told time the same way. Anyway, I started my exploration at the bus stop where I purchased an all day pass for 2.50 pounds. That’s a little less than $5.00, which sounds like a bit much but ended up being completely worth it. Whenever I’m in a touristy type of town I need to have a plan. Unfortunately, I’m just not motivated enough to come up with a real plan on my own, so my explorations tend to be a little unfocussed. I got off the bus on Rougier Street and walked about a quarter of a mile to Exhibition Square. One of the nice things about this little historic town is that they have a group of volunteer tour guides that give free two-hour walking tours every day. Since it’s summer they do it three times per day. Too bad I didn’t know what time the tours started. Well, I guess I’m an opportunist. I spotted a group of people and thought, "That could be the free tour," so I joined them. Of course I knew that it could just as easily not be the free tour, but what’s the worst that could happen. So I followed them along the tour for a little way and got to hear some interesting stories and see some interesting stuff. I was with them from Exhibition Square to the York Minster, which really only took about 15 minutes. When we got there the tour guide started talking about letting the people go in to the minster and getting back together after lunch. I was pretty sure the free tour didn’t include a lunch break. That’s when I noticed that they were all wearing little badges and had my suspicions confirmed. So I left them and struck out on my own. The minster area borders pretty close on the Shambles, which was pretty high on my list of things to see. It’s supposed to be one of the oldest streets in Europe, and they say you can touch both sides of the street at the same time while standing in the middle of the street. They don’t mention that you can only do that if you’re about 9 feet tall. It wasn’t billed quite as expected, but it was still cool anyway. It looked just like Diagon Alley and there were just as many people in it.

After going through the Shambles I wandered my way over to the castle area and saw Clifford’s Tower. I don’t remember the story exactly, but over a hundred Jews locked themselves in there to escape a mob and decided to take their own lives rather than suffer the mob’s "mercy." Behind that was the "castle," which didn’t look much like a castle to me. It’s a shame that I’m still having my cash flow problem because I would have loved to go through the Castle Museum and the Clifford’s Tower Museum. Plus, there was the York Dungeons that I would have liked to go through too. Maybe if everything works itself out by next weekend I’ll stay in York and go through them. London is still an option.

Lunch was at a Pizza Hut. There really wasn’t much difference from one here to one at home. It’s pizza. How different can it be? After lunch it was raining outside, so I decided to get on a bus to wait out the rain. I went from one side of town to the other and out on to Clifton Moor, which is where I’ve been working for the last week, so I didn’t get to see anything new. However, I wasn’t getting wet either, so I didn’t complain too much. I rode the train back to town and decided it was time to tackle the town walls. I planned to do two of the major portions still standing, but it just didn’t happen. I joined up with another tour group in the barbican and followed them a little ways, but the tour guide was talking too much about the Nestle factory and I decided to bail on them. So I walked around and took some more pictures. I went down the narrowest staircase imaginable. It was so tiny that if I had been just an inch or two taller I would have hit my head on the ceiling. I somehow ended up back outside the minster, but my camera decided not to cooperate anymore, and the battery died. And it started raining again. Lucky me. So I slipped into this church that Guy Fawkes was baptised in. Feel free to look Guy Fawkes up. I know nothing about him other than he’s historically important enough to have his own holiday in places other than America. Nice church. Very pretty and very old. There’s a lot of those around here.

After a while the rain died down and I decided to go back to the hotel. Along the way I found the York Tourism office and went inside. In there I discovered the times for the free tours. I’m not about to go on a guided tour of a historical city without my camera though. Fortunately I had enough time to get back to the hotel, recharge my camera’s batteries and head back out. Public transportation isn’t something I have a whole lot of experience with, so of course I got on the wrong bus. I realized it fairly soon after the bus took off, but of course by then it was too late. I was on it for the long haul. Mini-Mario took me on a tour of the residential side of York. I went all the way with him to the end of the line, where he decided it was time for a smoke break and got out. So I asked him how to get back to the hotel and after he finished laughing a little bit, he told me the bus I needed to catch and that he would tell me when I needed to get off his. Very helpful. An hour after I got on the first bus I found managed to make it back to my hotel. The good thing was that I still had enough time to recharge the batteries and call home.

I got back to Exhibition Square and sat around waiting for the tour to start. I met a woman from New Zeland who was backpacking around Europe. The impression I’ve always had about backpackers was that they were all young kids, either late teens or early twenties. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This woman was about 50 or 55 years old. She was in good shape, but not what you would expect from a backpacker. The tour itself was a little disappointing. We saw some old Roman walls, which was interesting, but the tour guide spent way too much time talking about the. Then we say the remains of Saint Mary’s (I think) Abbey. Again, it was pretty cool, but the tour guide spent too much time talking about it. Then we got back on the same portion of the wall that I was on earlier in the day. That second tour group I joined earlier? I should have stayed with them. Their tour guide was much funnier than mine. At least he knew a lot about the city though.

After the tour I walked most of the way back to the hotel. I was really looking for someplace to eat, but I didn’t have a whole lot of luck. I ended up catching the bus for the last half mile back to the hotel and ate in the hotel restaurant. Dinner was 31.45 pounds, which translates to $50+. That is officially the most expensive meal I’ve ever had by myself. It was good though. I had a liter of water, roasted lamb shank with mashed potatoes and a vegetable compote, and a black forest cake type thing. Worth every penny, and I hope my employer thinks so too.
So now I’m back in the room killing time before bed. It’s been a good day.