York, England - Aug 4,5

After London, I moved north by train.  I stayed a few nights in the town and I definately recommend it.  By day it's a tourist, shopping, museum mecca, by night it's a quiet little college town.  Here's a few pics from York, this town reminds of Carmel without the sea

The English Country side is absolutely  beautiful and underrated.  As you are cruising up on the train you literally see hundreds of cute farm houses and churches.  Imagine driving up the Highway 1 coastline and have a few English farmhouses and churches thrown in for good measure

York is like a seven layer cake of civilizations.  This picture shows how each civilization kept building walls on top of each other.  Before the Romans (whose wall I'm standing on for this picture) got here in about 45 AD (Constantine I was even procaimed emperor of the entire Roman empire here in 306), York was a big farming community. The Romans lasted for about 500 years until they had to retreat and fight their wars on their eastern front.  Then came the dark ages, no one really knows what happened because no one kept track.  Then the vikings came in 800 AD, lasted for about 100 years and then the Normans came from France. Much like contractors I hire, they each tried to do as little work as possible so they put a new facade on the existing wall and called it their own. By the way, they say York has the most ghosts of any town in Europe, I guess there's not enough room underground.

Like every militant American, I thought this was a bombed out church. In reality it was a Roman Church that's been dismantled and whose stones are reused throughout the city.  Stuff like this goes on all the time.  Ken here toured us through the city and has been on many of the digs, he says if you haven't found any ruins in York, you haven't dug deep enough. After being born in the city, he left to do the corporate thing in Scandinavia but came back to live the good life.  He digs and gives free tours. Ken hasn't seen any ghosts but he has friends that swear they have.  He says his friends have seen things that were only to be discovered years later. hmmm.

The Shambles is one of the main tourist streets here in York.  The neighbors across the street from each other can shake hands through their windows. The stores below them charge 20% more for stuff than the next street over. The reason their homes are tiered out is that there used to be a tax on the amount of ground each house covered and they way to pay less was to have a small footprint but build overhangs.  It sucked worse when there was a tax on the number of windows on a building, throughout Britain you see windows filled in with brick and wood all over the place.

If any of you are not visiting Europe because you are worried that you can't get a double-decaf-soy-latte-no-whip, Don't worry, I've only seen more starbucks per foot in Seattle and Manhattan.  The Brits have the same opinion of Starbuck's as we do, big corporate company squeezing the little guy.  Few admit going there, but they are always crowded...same as us.

What do I eat when I'm here?  Pub Grub! Sometimes I have no idea what I'm eating.  This is called "Toad in the hole", some type of  Yorkshire pudding.  After eating it, I'm not sure I still know what either term means.

On a somber note, in 1190, an anti-jewish riot led to a mass suicide of 150 Jews in Clifford's tower.  History always repeats itself and we shouldn't forget the lessons.

The Minster (church to you and me) in York is the largest Gothic structure north of the Alps.  Every time I think of Gothic I think of batman but Gothic architecture is really meant to accentuate height and light, it's only all of the polution that makes most gothic buildings the dingy black that we are used to.  This abbey is one of the few in the world that has all 3 gothic styles, Ornamental, Perpendicular, Original (don't worry I'm learning this myself and can't tell them apart)