Day 2 - Getting to York

Distance walked: hard to say, my FitBit has got horribly confused by the time zone changes, perhaps 10km
Alcohol consumed: 1 (large) glass of wine

I slept well, in spite of the less than comfortable bed, not waking until 6:30am.  Mary and I wandered down to an early breakfast in the basement breakfast room, where she had her first experience of a full English breakfast.  I had a fried egg, bacon, baked beans (from a tin) and tomatoes (oddly enough, also from a tin).  She didn't bother with the beans or the tomatoes but did brave one of the sausages.  We finished off with yoghurt and toast & marmalade.  A light breakfast as we hadn't done much walking yet.

After checking out we wandered off to King's Cross station, where we passed the time before our train watching people getting their photo taken pretending to push a luggage cart through the wall on Platform 9 3/4.  There was a sign and a cart artistically stuck halfway through a wall.  For a quite reasonable fee a professional photographer would take your picture.  You could have a scarf from the house of your choice around your neck and his assistant would hold the end of it (just out of shot) so it looked like it was streaming out behind you.  The adults were getting a great kick out of getting their pictures taken.  Their children seemed rather bemused by the whole exercise.

The train trip up to York went quickly.  We had splashed out for first class tickets which meant a meal was included in the price, so we had second breakfast.  Porridge with banana and maple (flavoured) syrup for me and drinkable (just) coffee.

We are staying in a serviced apartment here in York, the Lendal apartment in the St George's Keep building.  Mary got the bigger bedroom this time.  It is a lovely apartment.   Quite spacious with comfortable furnishings.  It is also close to everything which makes it handy.

The weather here is really quite pleasant.  It has been overcast but the weather has been very mild. Might just wear a t-shirt (plus jeans of course) tomorrow.  Some light drizzle but not enough to bother with an umbrella.  Positively summery by UK standards I suppose.

After unpacking, we went out for wander around the centre of York.  This is a fascinating city with so much to look at.  Fortunately, much of the very centre is pedestrianised, otherwise we would have been run over many times as we keep staring around at all the buildings rather than watching where we are going.  The local must hate all the tourists who clutter up the place.  While we were out we were forced to stop at a shop specialising in whisky, another that was all about chocolate and a third that just sold cat merchandise.  

We also did some proper sightseeing and visited Barley Hall which is a reconstructed medieval townhouse.  You could touch anything, sit on the chairs, handle the exhibits and so on.  This turned out to be not as good as thing as it sounded.  To make things tough enough to cope with all of this manhandling everything was made from rubber or plaster and was visibly fake.  There were many exhibits about Henry VIII also which was rather odd as he had only visited York the once.

After a hard afternoon of sightseeing we tottered back to our apartment for a brief pause before dinner.  We clearly need to work on our stamina as 4 hours on our feet wiped us out.

For dinner we visited a nearby restaurant, the Olive Tree, which had rave reviews.  We opted for a very reasonably priced two course set menu, but then rounded it out with wine, dessert & coffee so the final bill ended up being rather less reasonable.  The food was decent and very well presented but I wouldn't bother going back.  Decent mid-range brasserie food by Melbourne standards but nothing out of the ordinary. If this really is one of the best York has to offer then we really must be spoilt in Melbourne.

I had a duck & pork terrine for entree and then roast duck with sweet potato mash for main. Both dishes were tasty but sadly both came with exactly the same sauce.  A good waiter would have warned me, but I suspect he wasn't that familiar with the food. I had a quite decent panna cotta with strawberries for dessert.  It came with a scoop of ice cream that was supposed to be strawberry flavoured but was a pale purple in colour.  Now I love the colour purple, but not in my food.

We are now back at our apartment and I've managed to stay awake past 9pm!  Take that, jet lag.