Our alarm went off at 9am, and we checked out of the hotel at 10am. We drove into York and parked near our first stop: the National Railway Museum. This museum, like all national museums, was free to visit. We spent two hours wandering around looking at the trains. We didn’t spend too much time reading. Davin and I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by information lately. We have just been visiting too many interesting things! We were most amused by the royal trains. Obviously train riding CAN be comfortable, you just have to be royalty! We also saw part of a Japanese Shinkansen, but it was a lot older than the one I rode on in Japan. When we got tired of trains we moved on.
We walked along the river through a light drizzle. We crossed the second bridge we acme to and found Jorvic. Before we visited the ancient Viking village, we bought pasties for lunch. I had the ketchup bottle in my pack of course! We sat on the ground under an overhang and ate our hot pasties and watched the rain. It’s always nice to have a warm meal on cold rainy day.
Next we saw Jorvic. It wasn’t too expensive (8.95/per). I wanted to go to Jorvic again because I thought it was funny the last time I was there. It’s really not that great, but you take a ride through a life size diorama of life in Jorvic (Viking for York) when the Vikings lived there. The Vikings conquered much of England for one century (~850AD - 950). The diorama is amusing because it even tries to simulate the smell of the Viking town. So the whole time you are there you get to smell this disgusting sweet smell. I’m pretty sure the Viking village smelled much worse, like shit in fact, but if they made the smell any more realistic I don’t think anyone would visit the place. The ride through Jorvic hadn’t changed in the last five years. The part after the ride had changed though. It provided much more archeological information, and had many artifacts on display. Previously, it had catered more to children, and now it was obviously targeting adults. We again didn’t do too much reading. We were satisfied by looking at the artifacts.
Our last place to visit in York was York Minster. It is also a very large cathedral. We went inside and looked around. Unlike Durham cathedral, York Minster charges admission. We aren’t ones to pay to see a religious site, for several reasons, but we especially won’t pay a ridiculous 8.50 Pounds/person! So we just admired what we could see from the entrance way, and then went on our way. We walked back to our car in ever worsening rain. We were glad to get in the car, get out of our rain gear, and turn on the heater.
We drove 1h30m south to our next hotel. Unfortunately, we followed Google’s directions. It told us to exit at Junction 29, and then follow various named roads. We were led astray again. We ended up totally lost, and we wasted an hour driving around small village streets. In the end, we learned that had we simply stayed on the freeway we would have arrived 5 minutes past J29. The hotel was at a service station, so it’s meant to be reached via the freeway. Google messed up because the service station we wanted was on the opposite side of the freeway. Google couldn’t handle the concept of going down freeway past the hotel, and turning around to go back. Anyway, we finally made it to the hotel around 5:30pm.
We checked in, and started bringing in our bags. When we went to get the second load, Davin said we should just leave the hotel door unlocked because we’d only be a minute. I said something like, “Since when did you become such a risk taker!” and locked the door. Then we walked out the front of the hotel and there was the car sitting with the passenger side door wide open! Oops! Guess I was one to talk, huh? ;p
After we finished settling in, we went to the grocery store. It was a HUGE Tesco Extra. It definitely had everything we needed. Unfortunately, it’s a 15 minute drive, and it seems like everyone in the entire city of Chesterfield shops there! We bought ingredients for making pancakes, bought a roast chicken so we could use up the tortillas and salsa we still had leftover.
Back at the hotel, we ate the chicken, salsa, and tortillas for dinner and watched a Voyager. I went to the Road Chef to check my email and chat with Scott. Davin thought it was ridiculous, but I wanted to at least say ‘hi’ to Scott since I hadn’t had email yesterday and he had thought that I would. I hate the idea of someone worrying about me unnecessarily! When I returned to the hotel room, we watched 2 more episodes of Voyager, and then went to bed at 1am.
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