York

Hello,

Well, I have been promising pictures from York for two weeks now, but finally I have selected some of them to post here. These are a few pictures that represent only a tiny bit of the vast amount of pictures we took in the two days we spent there.

The most interesting things we saw there were: first the city. York was the most important city on Northern England from for a really long time, since the Romans up to the beginning of the 20th century. It made the city a very beautiful and personal place.

The streets are nice, with some of these narrow streets that probably two bikes won’t pass together, with stores on both sides and no open spaces. The buildings also tend to be bigger on the upper floors than the ground one, as they didn’t have to keep street space there.

York was also the capital of the Roman Empire on Northern England and Constantino The Great was nominated Roman Emperor there. It is surrounded by Roman walls that protected the city from foes during the Roman occupation and still are there.

The name York comes from the Vikings that have invaded the city, as they named it Jorvik. The Vikings that settled in the city were a mixed race of Norwegian and Irish and their influence is still present on the names of the streets like Stonegate, as “gate” (or “gata”) meant road or way.

There is also the Castle Museum, where they preserve lots of stuff from the most recent York history. It covers costumes, furniture, produce, weapons, toys, designs and building facades from the 8th to early 20th century. It is a very nice place to dive into the way our grandparents and their parents lived. They have facades from a number of important buildings like book stores, sweets stores and other from late 19th and early 20th century and have reconstructed the city inside the museum, so you can walk all the streets with these nice stores you usually see in movies, filled with original items from the time.

All in all, York was a wonderful and pleasant place to spend a couple of days and certainly one of the most pleasant places we have been.