Our list is all checked off.

Last full day in York started with a walk along the River Ouse to the York Castle Museum. We spent a few hours time travelling - this time more recent - from 1500's to presence. The museum is located in a former debtor's prison. The huge buildings were transformed in 1938 and now house a reconstructed street with authentic businesses from the 19th Century along with other historical and modern displays. It has been hugely influential for other museums around the world.

Then a leisurely walk through the narrow streets that while familiar, still confuse us with angles. We know we've seen them all before but still can't be sure where they are going to come out. The buildings are centuries old in some cases and many are listed. As a result, very limited changes can be made. When commenting to a waitress about the treacherous and rickety streets and stairways, she said her disabled sister-in-law can't come to York - impossible to navigate. The most the building owners can do is install a metal, removable ramp in front of rickety steps. Well, from the size of the crowds, keeping things the same is important for tourism, York's major source of revenue - but it comes with challenges.

This evening we attended a concert with Anne Reid (Last Tango in Halifax). She was wonderful - the theme of her evening was her love of songs in the movies. She was three when the war started and the movies provided her with an escape from the terrifying realities. It was a nostalgic evening of music. Nice ending.

Tomorrow is travel day. We take the train to Gatwick then leave the next day for home. We are looking forward to our return but also to taking time to digest this wonderful month.

River Ouse. The wall comes down to the river here. The Victorians added the 'arrow' windows for effect, sometimes on the wrong side of the wall!

Clifford's tower - next door to the York Castle Museum (the castle itself is gone)

Part of Kirkgate Street in museum

I just can't resist taking a picture every time I pass this amazing building. 

A few more pieces in the puzzle

We started the day by walking along the River Ouse to Jorvik Museum in Coppergate Centre. This is the location of an important archeological find in the 70's. While excavating for a commercial complex, the site of a flourishing Viking settlement was uncovered. The Museum now houses an interactive display of the dig, the artifacts and a replica of the part of the settlement. A ride takes you through the village complete with sounds, smells and moving figures. So we now know what happened when the Romans left town! At one point it is estimated there were as many as 15,000 people living here.

After a break for lunch, we then joined a two-hour walking tour of the city with stops at ruins and historical sites throughout the walled city. We were led by another knowledgeable volunteer - a retired scientist from York University who is now an avid amateur historian. Two hours is a long time and our brains and my feet were beginning to cry out by the time we were done but we had many questions answered and will now look at the stone walls, old buildings and statues differently.
A return visit to Betty's for dinner with an Engadine Torte for dessert was our reward for good behaviour.

Replica of dig with glass cover you can walk on. 

Village vignette with family playing game

Potter with wares for sale

Stone wall with first Roman then medieval layers

St Mary's Cathedral after Henry VIII"s ruffians destroyed it and sold the stone for use in other buildings  - now found throughout York. 

Engadine Torte: Luscious layers of hazelnuts. 

A few pictures of York

Part of the wall in good repair. Wooden doors with arrow slits covered the spaces.

Street we walk every day

Crooked buildings - see the dip in the second floor at the far end? 

Narrow streets with no traffic - no people either after the thunderstorm!

We enter the city through Bootham Bar and walk along High Petergate (a bar is a gate, a gate is a road!!)

Thunderstruck!

York oozes atmosphere within its protective walls and in no time you are aware of the layers (literally) of history present - from Roman, Viking and Norman periods through calamitous times during the reformations and, much later, WWII. Frequent repairs and excavations have revealed hidden crypts and treasures of history that are celebrated today.
The Minster has undergone changes from the original Norman structure to the present with each addition outdoing the last. But change has also resulted from disasters including a tower collapsing under its own weight and three destructive fires. Turns out the granite-coloured ceilings are painted wood and fire is a real danger. The first was arson (the parishioner didn't like the organ music), the second an accident (a tradesman left a candle burning), and the third lightning (two days after the announcement that women were allowed to be bishops).
In the present, restoration is now a constant and highly technical process. Millions of dollars are being spent to renew the granite structure and repair and strengthen the precious medieval stained glass.
Our first guide was a retired scientist and self-described atheist who is passionate about the building and its history. Her passion was infectious.

We attended the last Evensong with the choirboys until the fall and we fell in love with a couple of the youngest (about 8?) who sang their hearts out with capital O shaped mouths hitting high C and leaving haunting echoes as the anthem stopped. One boy looked completely bored until the music started, then angelic and focused.

We left the church to find a raging thunderstorm was occurring. The 2 hour walking tour didn't happen and we were forced to sit and drink coffee and watch the world go by. Oh what a hardship!!

York Minster in the rain (Bill is the tiny figure at the bottom)

The organ leading into the Quire. All the wood is Victorian, replaced after the second fire. 

Five sisters window - the grey is partly due to age and dirt but also due to the style - more abstract)

Close up of Five Sisters Window. The dark grey is centuries of grime. It is exquisite in its own way. 

Quick note before going out again!

We just can't help ourselves, we have to see it all!! And with York, that is a lot.
We started out with breakfast at our B&B with three groups of Americans - from east, west and central US and compared notes re what to see in York. Confirmed our list. Bill had a semi-full English breakfast - we have finally learned!
Then off to the Minster for a 10:00 tour. It was so information-packed that I decided to go twice! Between tours we went to Betty's - famous for pastries and had a "Yorkshire Fat Rascal" the best scone we've had. Next on our schedule was a tour of York but the sun was blazing and we decided the cool of the Minster was preferable to two hours outside. The second tour was completely different from the first - reinforced some details and added some others. I found it all fascinating and hope some of it sticks.
Now a tiny break (our B&B is close enough to stop by) then off to Evensong. For someone who is not religious, I spend a lot of time in churches! York Minster has a choir school associated with it and this will be the last service before they break for summer. So this will be special.
After that, feet willing, we'll do a city walking tour to give us a background for the rest of our time. My head will be buzzing by the end of the day.

tiny figure carved in stone (she is about six inches tall) 

Corporate sponsorship - the guy with the banner is advertising his window business. He paid for the window.

This beautiful ceiling of the tower in the middle of the church is so high, the Tower of Pisa would easily fit under it. 

Over the centuries, repairs to medieval stained glass has been done by adding more lead. The question now is how much repair of the repairs to do!

We love it already!

Spent the day travelling and by dinner time were unpacked and out the door of our B&B in York.
Wowsa! York is fabulous. We are staying just outside the wall - about 1 km walk through winding, wonderful streets to York Minster - the largest medieval gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. It took around 250 years to build in the 10-11th Centuries. You can see it from all angles but get no idea of the size until you are right there.
End of day so just pictures for now.

First sighting as we walked from B&B

Five fully grown blue whales would fit inside nose to tail!! We haven't even done the tour so more statistics to come. 

East window: largest expanse of medieval stained glass - as big as a tennis court

A perfect ending... pictures

St Martin in the Fields - on Trafalgar Square - built long before. 

Interior of the James Gibbs church - temporary addition of thousand folded birds is beautiful

Pall Mall - row after row of exclusive apartments and embassies

We were just saying how unchanged this part of London is and came around the corner....

St James Palace - mostly used for court officials

Burlington Arcade - tiny shops filled with luxurious goods

St James Church - one of Christopher Wren's favourites 

Piccadilly

Trafalgar with newer sculpture - a 7 meter-high thumbs up titled "Really good" in the hopes that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy for London 

From Trafalgar to Piccadilly

Even though our tube station is again open, we decided to slow ourselves down and take the bus. We walked a mile or so to the bus stop and then had the ride of a lifetime (in slow motion) past The Tower, St Paul's, Fleet Street, and the Royal Courts of Justice, ending up at Charing Cross Station. Trafalgar Square is across the street. The bus ride took over an hour (probably 10 minutes by tube) because the traffic is beyond belief. But it gave us time to gawk (front row seats on the top deck!)

Our day then consisted of just wandering around Trafalgar Square along with thousands of others, knocking on the door of the Canadian Embassy, walking down Pall Mall past St James Palace, along Jermyn Street and through a few arcades (Londonese for really expensive shops in an alley). We stopped into Fortnum and Mason for some £40 pate, then up Piccadilly to the Circus. We also stopped into two peaceful churches on the way, incongruous in all this luxury. St James has as its mandate ministering to the poor and lives the talk. A sign asks that homeless people needing to sleep please lie only in pews on the Piccadilly side of the church. We sat absorbing the beautiful setting to the sound of quiet snoring - quite a moving experience.
Piccadilly is a riot of noise, colour, and traffic even in the daylight and was swarming with a younger crowd. We ended up back in Trafalgar and sat at a sidewalk cafe watching the riot of end-of-day traffic and people. Buskers with loud-speakers added a certain ambiance to the scene!
Now I'd say that was the way to end our London experience.
Tomorrow will be mostly cleaning and packing. We're meeting our home exchange partner for a hello/goodbye dinner then off to York Wednesday. Probably (hopefully?) no stories until then.

Kew Garden again

Next stop. Kew! We decided to return to Kew for the rest of the day. The weather was perfect - warm and sunny but not the oppressive heat we experienced the first time. It is such an enormous property that we discovered all sorts of areas we'd missed. The garden's mandate is conservation. There is a team of botanists travelling the world collecting seeds for a heritage collection. They estimate they've gathered seeds from 10% of the world's plants. Their other focus is bees and the health of the bee population. They have a sculpture of a beehive that hums with the actual vibrations of a hive. It was originally in a World's Fair display. You can hear 'bee talk' by holding a wooden stir stick to a post and 'hear' the sounds through your teeth and the bones in your skull. Amazing!!

Palm House - you can walk both under and around the top of the gigantic tropical plants

Demonstration garden - showing plant relationships

Princess Diana Conservatory. The building is enormous and has many 'rooms'. Each room is a different botanical ecosystem - the plants are exotic and amazing - like from another planet. 

Looking up in the beehive sculpture

People sitting inside the hive -listening to the hum

Behive sculpture from a distance

Petticoat Lane

So that was a long day! Our location is badly affected by the train stoppages so much debate takes place about how to get from here to there (the debate isn't just between Bill and I - the staff at the stations give us a different opinion at each stop!) Oh well, we get where we want eventually and are only too aware of the importance of the system to the population here and how amazingly well it works. Our station should be up and running again tomorrow for our last two and a half days in London.
We started out at Petticoat Lane - not far from us. Sunday is the biggest market. The name of the lane was shocking to Victoria's London so changed to Middlesex. But Petticoat Lane Market not only survived but was made official by an act of parliament in 1937. If you are looking for a bargain in clothing, this is the place.

Another stop on our way home - The Barbican

We didn't bring a guidebook with us today so had to wing it once our original plans were foiled. On our way back in from Wimbledon, we decided to return to our favourite London Museum for an hour or so. We also find the area, The Barbican, interesting. This area was badly damaged during WWII and in the 60's a huge restoration project took place. Commercial, residential, and arts complexes took nearly 20 years to complete but the results are impressive. It is an amazing series of buildings with raised walks that meander amongst them and look over playgrounds, parks, and offices. One walkway takes you from the underground station over top busy roads to the London Museum with a similar raised entrance. The old city wall crops up here and there.

Pride of ownership demonstrated by the elaborate balcony gardens

Playground with older kids playing basketball on a nearby court.

Offices below the walkway

Drought-proof gardens alongside part of the walkway

Looking straight down the street from above to the Museum

A number of high-rises in amongst the lower buildings

Mind the gap....

Musical entertainment while travelling

Wimbledon town

Signs along the way. Watch out for those touts!!

That's funny, no queue!

First glimpse of the stadium

Through the fence....

Quiet trip home at the end of the day. Everyone either gave up or is stuck on some other line.