On a brighter note...

Rather than overload you (and put you to sleep) with an overly-long slide show of my vacation, I'll break it up and give you a few pics a day. How's that? :) What, you're already asleep? Wake up, damn it!

I'm not presently at my funniest, owing to jetlag, a cold from hell, and my deceased cat, but I'll see what I can do.

Today we have York, founded AD 71, which was not where we started (York, I mean. I was born after AD 71, believe it or not.) We started in Scotland, but I managed, near the end of that segment, to erase all the photos on my camera. It probably would have been wise to read the manual on my new camera before I started fooling around with it while bored on a train. Duh!

This is the River Ouse in York, England, from Skeldergate Bridge. Beautiful! But it floods, sometimes badly.



Here we have a part of the absolutely incredible York Minster, probably my favourite church in all of the UK (though I am extremely fond of Bath Abbey.) It is the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, and made my friend Phyllis cry when she first went inside. This was my third visit and I remain impressed by it.



The round window is the famed "Rose window" which suffered in the tragic fire of 1984 but has been restored. The poor Minster has suffered several fires over the years.




Moving on, here is just some of the beautiful stained glass inside the Minster. Wikipedia says that York Minster has "the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world." I can believe it!



A section of ceiling...



And now we're out of the Minster and at an ancient city gate. This is Micklegate Bar. They used to stick severed heads on top of it. Fortunately that tradition has died out.




This is Clifford's Tower, another interesting bit of York (oh hell, all of York is interesting!) It was part of York Castle. In 1190, 150 Jews were trapped there by a raging mob bent on murder. Rather than submit to that, the group committed suicide. Details vary slightly on this. some say they slit their throats, some say they set the tower on fire (there was definitely a fire, regardless.) Whatever happened, it's a sad story. You can read about it on Wikipedia, if you click on the Clifford's Tower link at the start of this paragraph.



And now for something completely different (and definitely not kosher!) Who knew that LARD was something worth advertising at a pork butcher?



And finally, off we went to Bath. Which I will cover another day, when you have recovered from your York visit! We were both knitting scarves on the way to Bath.