North To York

Today we hopped on the train and headed to York... not New York, Old York (as we kept having to clarify for McColley).

We arrived at the train station, which we later found out had once been the largest in Europe:

Our first order of business was hopping onto the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus for a guided tour of the city:

We had intended to hop-off pretty regularly, however Brayton fell asleep, so we ended up doing the whole loop and then hopping off when we hit our intended hop-off point the second time:

By this point we were hungry, so we stopped at a local cafe.  When our tummies were full it was time to walk!

Part of our walk took us through The Sh.ambles (recently voted the most picturesque street in the UK):

Our destination was the Hun.gate archeological dig:

 The boys found the active site really interesting, but we had heard on our tour that there was a museum where the kids got to dig too.  Unfortunately I misunderstood the location of the museum. However, one quick check of G.oogle Maps later and we found it.

And the kids really did get to dig for antiquities:

 We had a guided tour through the museum and got lucky that no one else joined our group.  We learned all about four periods of York occupation (Roman, Viking, Medeaval and Victorian).

The kids also got to handle some of the artifacts found in the city and figure out what they were looking at:

Our next destination was Y.ork Mins.ter however we got sidetracked.  We stumbled onto a redundant church (Holy Trinity at Good.ramgate) that has been turned into a museum:

After our short diversion, we did make it to the Mi.nster:

We also got lucky that while we were wandering around an organist was playing.  Aunt Roberta and McColley paused for a moment in the quire to listen:

Our last stop in the city was the N.ational Railr.oad Museum... however we had to walk quite a way to get there.  Our walk took us over the River O.use:

When we finally got to the museum the boys were rewarded for their journey.  The Th.omas The Ta.nk Engine ride-on worked even though we didn't put any money in!

The boys also enjoyed all the hands-on demonstrations, especially the one where they got to pretend to be the station announcer:

As the real announcer warned us that the museum was closing soon, we raced over to the R.oyal section and peaked into some windows:

Then it was time to walk back to the real train station and ride home.