St Patrick's Day in York

Last weekend my friend AM had to go up to Harrogate for a conference, so we made the most of it and spent the weekend in York. It was a bit ironic to spend St Patrick's day in the quintessential English town, but we managed.

York is a small little town in the north of England, about two hours train ride from London and a big tourist destination for folks all over the UK. It was a great little town to visit - so small it was impossible to get lost but with lots of great sights to see in a couple of days.

After we arrived at the station, we found our little B&B hotel and braved the cold for a guided walk around Roman York. Turns out York was one of the main areas settled by the Romans and ruled by them for several hundred years. The wall surrounding the city was started by the Romans then built up over the centuries - most of what you can see and walk on now is medieval, but you can still see lots of Roman remnants around the town. Pretty amazing to me that we can still see construction from the year 100. As part of the tour we walked on a good portion of the wall, seeing into people's backyards as well as a nice view over the rooftops of the city.

We were quite cold after our walk so we of course needed to warm up with some Guinness. We found a great little pub, the Punch Bowl, and settled in there for a few hours and many pints of Guinness. Their St Paddy's day promotion was a free hat with four pints purchased. It was easy to get one hat, but if we wanted to walk out of there drinking four pints each was a bit tough. Luckily some nice local guys gave us their extra tickets and we scored two hats, as well as some other Guinness souvenirs.

After several hours at the Punch Bowl we got the bright idea that we should go to a real Irish pub and went to O'Neills, where we queued up for a nasty, smoke-filled, sticky floor experience. At one point we were pegged in by a filthy ashtray on one side and a couple in need of a room on the other. So we decided to forget it and went back to the punch bowl for the rest of the night.

York is evidently full of ghosts and I thought we were visited by one at the pub. After all, it was 400 years old. However, I think I just drank too much beer and was tricked by my pub-mate!

The next day we had a lovely breakfast and saw more York sites. Unfortunately I talked AM into going to Jorvik, the Viking site in town. The woman working at the hotel tried to politely dissuade us, but I thought it sounded pretty neat. Avoid it at all costs - unless you are dying to see a Viking latrine in action! Easily one of the tackiest tourist attractions I have ever visited. I guess people queue up for hours in the summertime. I feel sorry for them.

After Jorvik we got literally blown into the York Minster. I didn't realise this before, but evidently a Minster is the seat of the church in the diocese. It is also a cathedral. Not all cathedrals are minsters and not all minsters are cathedrals, but this one is both. In terms of a tourist experience, I think this is one of the best churches I have visited so far in Europe. You pay one fee to see the inside of the church, climb up the tower and go to the crypt below. The tower was quite a haul up, but the views were well worth it. The church itself is beautiful, sparkling clean and with nice stained glass all around. And the crypt comes with an audio tour that was very well done. I learned a lot about the history of the minster and more about York.

After the Minster, we finished up our time in York with a traditional tea at Little Betty's (big Betty's is in the town centre and always has a long queue). Scones, tea and yummy lunch.

Photos from the weekend (including several with hats on!) are posted here.

A Visit to Flanders

The first week of March I had some good friends in town and we all took a weekend trip to Bruges, Belgium, in what was once Flanders.

We took the Eurostar in on a Friday evening which was a bit of an adventure in itself. We upgraded to 'Leisure Select' which meant we got fed a pretty nice meal and were kept in wine, water and coffee for the short trip to Brussels. This was the first time I have gone beyond the regular coach class on the Eurostar and I would highly recommend it, especially if the ticket difference is only 10 pounds like it was for us.

I had heard before that Bruges was a nice place but I really didn't know that much about it. Turns out that Bruges was originally part of Flanders (as was Amsterdam and most of the Netherlands) and most people there speak Flemish. Silly me, I thought most people in Belgium spoke French. When I heard people speaking Flemish, I was really confused - I thought, well that is not German, it is definitely not French, what is that??? I guess it is quite close to Dutch. I found myself getting confused as to whether or not to say Merci or Danke but the Flemish is close enough, Dank U, so not sure if they could tell anyway, since I am a dumb english speaking american.

The first confusion with the different language though came when we were looking for the train from Brussels onwards to Bruges. JIm was asking for Bruges, but the lady in the station was saying Brugge (sounds like bru-ga). We were talking about the same place, but were saying it in three different languages. Luckily we found our train and onwards to Bruges without a problem.

Once we made it to Bruges, we stayed in a very charming B&B that Cathe had found on the web right near the town centre. After a snack (including a lovely Belgian beer) we settled in for the night.

The next morning we awoke to what we thought was a very miserable storm coming in - the wind and rain sounded so horrible I think we all thought we were going to stay in all day. Luckily it didn't rain much on us on Saturday, though I have to say it was definitely colder than I expected. We made the most of it though, we saw some great art including some Flemish primitives, explored a lot of of the city's major sights on foot or during a bus tour, and of course, sampled from many of the 47 chocolate shops in the area. Sunday Cathe and I also got the opportunity to endulge in Moules and Frites - Belgian Frites of course, not French.

While we were there, there were crews filming a new movie, In Bruges, due out in 2008 and starring Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. Unfortunately we did not see them wandering around, but we did see a lot of cameras and the Christmas decorations that were up as part of the setting.

To say that Bruges is charming is quite the understatement - it is a gorgeous city surrounded by canals - a very clean, smaller version of Amsterdam. I would definitely recommend it for a weekend. Photos are posted here.