3-6-2022: York (part 2)

Finally a no-travel-day! We started our day with breakfast at the hotel. Instead of a buffet or standard full English breakfast, you get a menu, you may order what you'd like and they serve you at your table. Fancy! 

After breakfast we returned to the old town. Especially for Gaia we revisited The Shambles and boy was it busy there! There were a gazillion tour groups and you couldn't really walk around or really see anything, so we hightailed it out of there to go visit the York Minster. I'd pre-booked tickets (yes, that's me, I like to be prepared), so we could just walk in. 

The Minster is very impressive. We could have climbed the tower (a little over 400 steps). Our heads said yes, our bodies were about to cry, so we decided not to climb the tower, but we did explore the crypts and the whole of the cathedral. 

After the cathedral, we visited the Minster Gate Bookshop. After Judd's, our favorite 2nd hand bookstore. Like Judd's it had a lot of old books, but also a lot of new books. We were starting to wonder if we were going to need an extra suitcase for all the books we were buying! The only downside of the store is that there are a lot of narrow staircases to get from one small room to another, so it's easy to get kind of lost (or lose your companions). 

We finished our afternoon with the special Jubilee Afternoon Tea. We were promised lots of English specialties (including fruitcake, something they were especially proud of), which we got. It was great, but we suppose we're not English enough, since we didn't enjoy the fruitcake all that much. The remnants of those might have ended up stashed away in a bag as not to offend our hosts....