York, Part 1

June 30, 9am

FYI, Pancake = Crepe. Must wait to see what Scotch Pancakes are until tomorrow. Brekkie was yummy and we're now shortly off to York Minster. Mel has gone off to the loo. So yesterday we obviously slept in and Reuben drove us to Stevenage Station. Avoiding London = cheaper AND less traffic. We arrived in York 5 minutes after the tourist bureau closed. Yeah! And with a bit of orientation, found our B&B with little problem.

Had dinner in a pub – nice jacket potatoes – then stared at the "monks" having a beer in the garden. Found out later as we crossed paths again that what we say was the "vicar" portion of a "tarts and vicars" party.

We wasted some time, had a drink at a different pub and then when on The Original Ghost Tour of York. Mel and I disagree about the Roman Ghost Story. Ask later for more details. Mel out of loo and roaring to go.

June 30, 7pm

Made it back to the B&B. Still in one piece, but hurting. Today was a battle of wills. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't turned into Jenny the Uber Klutz.

Forgot to mention Hoover, who looks exactly like Norman did when he was a kitten, except for the caramel colored eyes. I was getting him into trouble this morning during breakfast. I wanted to play with the kitten!!!

Anyway, we took off after breakfast and climbed up top the city walls. After some awesome pictures, Jenny took a tumble – there was a step down… and I didn't step down. Went down. Flat. Landed mostly on my right knee then flat on my stomach. It could have been worse says Mel and later the newsagent. There's no railing… you could have toppled off the side.

I got up with Mel's help and walked it off on the way to the Minster.

That's when it got interesting as I had promised myself that I would climb the tower - 275 narrow spiraling steps to the top. Mel elected not to climb it, but I did. Grr! Argh! I made it to the top in ten minutes flat. Near the top I slowed a bit and the guy behind me told me to take my time. I got the feeling that his wife was coming up right behind him and he wanted to use me as an excuse to take a breather himself.

Going down was interesting enough when my knee hurt and my legs felt like jelly. At the bottom I showed Mel the picture I asked some Germans to take, and she was seriously happy she missed it. The guide on our tour had said something along the lines as this for a warning: "I always used to say that everyone who made it up, always made it back down again… but earlier this month a man had a heart attack at the top and they had to use a helicopter to get him down. They've been a bit more cautious about warning people lately."

Once outside the Minster, I was really sad when I saw a poster for Brahms' Requiem in the Minster – for yesterday. That would have been cool!

After the full Minster experience, I wanted tea. Of course, when you're looking for it, you can't find it, but on the way home we saw dozens! We did manage to stop and had tea, biscuits and a tea cake at the tea room above the Teddy Bear Shop. Mel's teacake was huge, but my biscuits, although T shaped, were tiny… so we (Read I) traded one of my biscuits for half of her teacake.

Our next stop was the Treasurer's House. Some really rich guy had no wife or children and decided to spend all his money before he died. The main way he did this was to decorate and furnish a house he planned to give to the National Trust when he died. He was so anal about his plans that he placed studs in the floor to mark the exact furniture locations and left little sign detailing day to day operations.

The most interesting part of the house was The Haunted Cellar. We scoffed at the hardhats until even I, Jenny the Short One, bumped my head twice. The guide was amusing and the story was familiar – a guy putting in a boiler hole sees a tattered Roman Legion stroll by, knees disappearing beneath the floor. .. only for them to discover (20 years later) that the Roman Road lay under the cellar floor… just at knee height. This is the story that I say was also retold in the Canterbury Roman Museum.

Mel and I (okay, mainly me) decided that we should then have ice cream and then dinner in that order. My reasoning was that the ice cream shops I'd seen were all in our part of town.

We had Indian for dinner, Akbars, and learned the hard way that Family Garlic Naan served four. Not only that, but it was the size of an extra large pizza crust served vertically impaled on a rack by three waiters who seemed highly entertained by the look on the Americans' faces when they brought it to the table. We were defeated by the Naan.

We were back to the B&B by 7, and after discovering that there's nothing on the telly, but East Enders, Wimbledon, and news programs about knife crime, Mel promptly turned it off and is now snoring away with a pillow on top of her face. Photo Opportunity! :)