EPIC Five Hours in York, UK

Travel Diary

Day 1:

We went on a mini train trip to the Northern part of England for our last trip before making our way back to Canada. On our way up to Durham we made sure to stop in York which has been on our bucket list for awhile now. It is only 2 hours away from Birmingham by train but somehow we haven't found the time for a visit yet. It was also cheaper to book a train ticket to York, and then a separate ticket to Durham. 

The city is surrounded by a city wall which you can walk on. We just got there and we were already impressed by how cool York looks.

York really has the old feel we were looking for as tourists exploring the UK.

We don't get to see this sort of stuff back in Canada.

We walked through a park past the museum and saw St Mary's Abbey.

We walked around towards the front of the York Art Gallery.

York has a long history going back to the Romans which you can see.

We walked through the charming streets and made our way to one of the main sights of York which is York Minster. Unfortunately York Minster was not open to the public because of a funeral so we didn't get to go inside.

Next up we found the Shambles which is York's oldest street. It is a medieval street so it's narrow and has charming old buildings.

There is a market next to the Shambles called the Shambles Market. We spotted a food stall with vegan options.

Another place of note is the old Merchants Hall.

We were getting a bit hungry and so we headed to El Piano which came highly recommended by The Vegan Engineer.

We made sure to try some of the coffee and chai tea. They have a unique menu. 

We tried the soup of the day and the Thai curry.

After lunch we went to a pub with a Roman Bath in the basement.

A Roman Bathouse was discovered when the pub upstairs was doing renovations and now it's a little museum. These are the remains of the bathouse part of a Roman Legionary fortress called Eboracum which was built in 71 AD. The fortress was 50 acres so this bathhouse is just a small part of it. The bathouse was a place the 5000 soldiers that lived in the fortress liked to hang out to get clean, drink, eat and have fun.

There used to be wood flooring on top of where the pillars are and heat from the furnace in the floor would heat the room. It sounded like a sauna but it was called a Caldarium. After working up a sweat in the Caldarium the soldiers would got to the Frigidarium to cool off in a cold pool.

We had fun dressing up like Roman soldiers.

There were a few displays in the museum telling you all about the Roman Baths and life as a Roman.

There is all kinds of Roman stuff buried under York since it is such an old city.

York has a history of Vikings so there is a museum called the Jorvik Viking Centre. Jorvik is the old Norse name for York. The Jorvik Viking centre is closed until 8th April 2017.

We followed the signs to Clifford's Tower which is a part of York Castle.

Inside the tower we climbed to the top and got an excellent view of York.

The view from Clifford's tower is probably the best view of York you can get unless you can climb to the top of York Minster.

It was very cold on top of the tower though so we didn't stay up there long.

Luckily there was a little shop in the Tower where we were able to get warm.

We walked along the river for a little bit and looked at the birds.

There were birds all over the place.

We walked back to the Shambles Market and then we found a comic book store that was called Travelling Man.

We window shopped a little more and then walked back to the train station. On the way there we took some pictures up on the city wall.

We had an excellent time in York and we definitely understand why it came highly recommended as a city for tourists to visit as it has so much history. We were lucky we were able to have a stopover in York but now it was time to catch our train to Durham to visit our friend.

Continue reading: 'A Day Trip to Newcastle Castle'

Did you enjoy York as much as we did? Will you add it to your bucket list for England?