It was a glorious day with the sun shining for the first time in quite a while. We only had a few things we wanted to do so we took our time getting out of the flat. Our first stop was a 30-minute scenic cruise on the River Ouse (pronounced “Ooze”). We managed to get there just in time for the 1100 cruise and it was lovely. There not really that much to see along the river but we enjoyed it anyway.
After the cruise, we sat in the York Museum Garden and had our sandwiches for lunch. Today is the last day with a kitchen until we get to Paris on Saturday so we didn’t want to eat out yet again as we’ll have at least one restaurant meal per day until we get a kitchen in Paris.
Then it was a short stroll back to York Minster which, as I mentioned yesterday is closed for sightseeing but is open for services, prayer, reflection and to sign the condolence book. We caught the last few minutes of the midday service and afterward thought about signing the condolence book but there was quite a line so we decided lighting a candle and saying a prayer were enough.
Photography was not allowed so here are a couple more pictures I found online.
From the Minster, we headed to King’s Square for our daily dose of ice cream. Since it was such a beautiful day and it was about 1pm, the square was full of people. We even had a street entertainer. For some reason the video wouldn’t embed so here’s a link if you want to give it a look. It’s less than a minute long.
Our next stop was at the Jorvik Viking Center, a wonderful exhibit/museum filled with information and artifacts from the town of Jorvik. The Vikings settled all through England but Jorvik (Norse for York) had the densest population and was their capital city. Vikings ruled parts of England until about 954.
A Viking town was found under the modern city of York and during the excavation, they found ruins of homes and thousands of artifacts. The Jorvik Viking Center displays many of those artifacts. To give an idea of what life was like in the Viking town, we took a narrated cart ride though about a dozen dioramas. The figures were automated and were very lifelike. A few of them were actually modeled after skeletons found in the ruins.
I took a few videos but it took over 45 minutes to upload the one I took in King’s Square so I decided a few still photos of the dioramas will have to suffice.
And, here are some of the artifacts.
Our final stop today was a small section of the York City Walls. To walk the wall all round the city would take several hours but Peter wanted to walk a little of it. So, we found the spot closest to the Jorvik Viking Center and climbed the 20 steps to the top.
After a final look at the front of Clifford’s Tower, we headed to the bus for the short ride home. It was a wonderfully slow-paced day which is good because tomorrow it’s back in the car for our next stop, Alnwynk, where we might just run into another castle.
