DASNET

The very next morning, our last day in London. Got up, cleaned up, packed up, and then ate up. We ate in the hotel, where they had two different breakfasts -- a regular "continental" and a "fried up" breakfast. We had the fried up, 'cause it included things like eggs and sausage and other hot stuff (as opposed to cold meats, cheese, and fruit). Turns out it wasn't free (which we'd've known if we'd looked a little closer at the hotel pamphlet). it was £14.50! That's $28! PER PERSON! We were not impressed with the price, and less impressed with the food. We're just happy that we hadn't been eating that every morning, thinking it was free!

So we checked out, left our bags at the front desk, and headed down to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where we completed some brass rubbings we were doing for our moms (as Mother's Day gifts), and a couple for ourselves. Then it was rush back to the htel, grab a cab to Kings Cross, and into the 'Q'. After quite a while in line, our train finally came in, and everybody rushed aboard. The trip back was uneventful, though when we got to Leeds we just barely made it onto the connecting train. Somehow, we arrived in Harrogate ahead of schedule, and surprised Lauren by walking in the door (when she was just beginning to think about walking to the station to meet us).

Being pretty much pooped, we spent the evening at home, enjoying a homemade lasagna dinner that couldn't be beat, watching some of the Chapelle show (sent by Rod), and catching up on Alias (sent by, er, us). After some ice cream, we all went to bed. Well, Matt didn't (he stayed up watching Kingdom Hospital - have I mentioned they really don't like British TV?)

We woke up, bright and early, refreshed, and ready to take on the world! Well, no, actually, that was fantasy land. We slept in, then went for sausage rolls and starbucks. Then it was into the car for all of us, playing tourist!

It was off to Fountains Abbey. Fountains Abbey is (was) a Cistercian Abbey, founded in 1132 and in operation until Henry VII (he is, he is) dissolved all the monasteries in 1539. It's now a ruin, but an incredibly huge and complex ruin. It's also a World Heritage Site, sort of like a National Park for the planet. We'd never heard of the World Heritage program (though it turns out we've been to a couple sites already, closer to home). Anyway, we walked around the ruins for hours. There's a whole huge section that was dormitories or an infirmary or something, under which a river (or large creek) flows. We figured that provided cooling, plus, well, an outlet. For privies. Anyway, it had several outbuildings, several clusters of other buildings, cloisters, a huge storage room, and, oh, yeah, a cathedral. We could have spent another few hours there, easily, and that's not even counting the other more modern buildings, terraces, and what-not further down the river.

After leaving there, we took a quick detour to snap pictures of a couple odd road signs, for Matt. Then we rested (which we all needed), and had a great dinner at a Tapas restaurant in town. After that, it was The Reduced Shakespeare Company, in the Harrogate theatre, performing "All The Great Books (abridged)." It was sort of funny, in England, seeing a play that's sort of American (it's set in a US High School Gym the morning before the big literature final), especially with some of the Bush-bashing that sort of slipped in accidentally throughout the night. After the show, we walked around a bit, then back home to watch Catch Me If You Can (which Andrea and I had still not seen). Great flick. <yawn!> Time for bed.

Sunday was a "goofing off" day for us. Andrea and Lauren went to Tea at Betty's Tea Room, and then visited the Harrogate spa. David and Matt, meanwhile, did manly things. Well, no, actually, they did a bit of driving down to Leeds, poked around a warehouse looking for clues to a cache ("Resistance is Futile" -- more on that in a few days), and drove all over the countryside finishing up another puzzle cache, planting a cache ("Enigma Redux"), and helping to move a table for some friends. We also passed a beautiful Ford GT40 on the road. It looked like it was only about 2 feet high, was painted with racing colors, and even had right-hand drive!

Later in the evening we all regrouped, then drove back out into the countryside for dinner at the Hopper Inn -- a little pub & inn not far from Fewston Reservoir. After dinner, we drove by the water hole where we'd stashed the new cache, and went home to watch The Simpsons. While getting ready for bed, we reviewed our plans for York....

Ahh, Monday. And we're not at work! Ha, ha! (sorry, couldn't resist). It's up, pack up a day bag, and off to eat... (wait for it...) ...sausage rolls. Then, to the train station we go! Today, we're visiting York, and the trip is pretty short (about 40 minutes with stops), and cost only about £6.50 each, round trip. Along the way we passed through some of the beautiful Yorkshire countryside, spooking countless rabbits along the way. We finally arrived at York, and basically follwed the crowd towards what we hoped would be the city. (We also had a map, but it was pretty obvious which way to go).

We first climbed up on to the wall. Old York is relatively small, and its circumfrential wall is still completely intact. We walked along it for a short while, then had to go back down to ground level to cross over the river (I guess they didn't need a wall over the river). After crossing, we turned a bit away from the wall and found ourselves facing the York Minster, one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world. It's massive East Window is the size of a tennis court. The cathedral was completed in 1472 and is absolutely amazing. They built it atop an earlier Norman church (and even incorporated some of the stained glass into the "new" building, so it now has some 1000-year-old windows). The Norman church was built on the ruins of an old Roman basilica, at which a young Constantine I was proclaimed emperor in 306 (the only time a new emperor was proclaimed outside of Rome). We could go on for hours talking about this church -- the glass, the clocks and bells, the ceiling, bosses, and flirtations with disaster (fire, war, and an ancient Roman sewer that was undermining the foundation). All we can really say, now, is if you're ever going to be anywhere near York, arrange to stay an extra day and see this (and the town, too) (it's also the only major cathedral where we were permitted to take pictures inside).

Once we'd completed the tour (oh, yeah, if there's one thing we've learned on this trip, take the guided tours of the big churches), we walked south into the old town to look for food. We ate at a small pub, wandered around a bit, and finally managed to stumble into the shambles. This is a short street that reportedly served as the inspiration for Diagon Alley, and we could really understand the inspiration. The buildings on either side are relatively close, but what's really crazy is what happened over time. The landowners decided, over the years, to build upward for more space. But each time they added a floor, they'd extend it over the street a few feet. Until, by the 3rd or 4th floor, some buildings across the street from each other were just about touching. It's kinda wild. Today, the street is filled with touristy shops (and some not-so-touristy ones), and we spent some time window shopping and bought some coins at a nice shop at the end of the street.

We then walked back to the wall, stopping at the Monk's Bar (a gate) and poked around the Richard III museum (he was from York, you know). Then we walked back to the train station along the wall, enjoying some lovely views of the Minster's back gardens along the way. When we got back to the house, we gathered up ourselves, got some Pizza Hut pizza, and went to Valley Gardens Park for a picnic. They took us to their favorite picnic spot, where Lauren and Andrea investigated the anatomical correctness of the baby statues in the fountain. The park has some really great park benches, too, made to look like snakes. Then it was off into the woods to plant Matt & Lauren's first cache, "Yorkshire Yankee Doodle." We wandered along the trails for some time, marveling at the beautiful flowered trees, until we found Just The Right Spot. We took some pictures, walked back to the house, watched the Alias season finale, and then collapsed into bed.

Oh, yeah. There's a mouse in the house. Lauren is not amused.

Today was tourista day. While Matt was off at work, Lauren drove us around Yorkshire. We started at Ripley Castle. It's a nearby manor home with deer park, formal gardens, and 900+ years of family history. They have a great tour, showing off about half the formal rooms of the house, including an incredible armorial window (filled with a stained-glass coats-of-arms family tree). One of the best rooms was the Armory, where they recently found a priest hole hidden behind one of the wooden wall panels. One of the family ancestors was a Catholic priest, back when it wasn't such a hot idea to be so in England, and this was where he'd hidden while troops searched the house. There was also a room where Cromwell ("may he rot in hell forever, yada yada yada," as Andrea likes to say) was once a "guest" of the house. The story was that Cromwell and his army came to spend the night while on a march, and the mistress of the house, being a royalist, agreed to let him stay, but she spent the night watching over him with pistols in hand. There are still bullet holes in some of the walls where troops carried out executions. The gardens were quite extensive, and featured genuine California Sequoia trees (which, though "only" a hundred years old were still quite massive). The family still lives in the house, though they pretty much keep to the top floor of the house (which is still a fairly big flat).

Then, time for our ritual stop at a McDonald's. Ritual, that is, in that we had to stop at one at least once (we tried it in Germany and weren't too impressed, though the beer was nice). It was actually quite good -- perhaps having fresh ingredients makes a difference. After that, we drove a good distance to Whitby. Whitby is a seaside town on the northeast coast. It's best known, perhaps, as the setting for Bram Stoker's Dracula (the book, not the movie). Also, Captain Cook sailed from there, and it was a whaling town for some time. The town is built in a narrow cleft between two cliffs, one of which is the site of abbey ruins (we didn't climb the steps to the ruins, though). We took in some of the sites, shopped a bit, and walked along the beach looking for jet. Jet, which we didn't know before we got to Whitby, is a semi-precious stone that's basically fossilized coal. When cut and polished, it's a deep, glossy black. It's also very soft, and quite light -- doesn't feel like a rock at all. Anyway, almost all jet is mined right near Whitby, and it washes up on shore from time to time.

On the way back, we took a detour northwards to a town that David had found on a map. See, David's family's last name wasn't always Schuetz -- when his great grandfather Albert came over from Germany in the mid 1800's, he changed his name to Schuetz from something else. We think that his old name was Loftus (and that his father was "Count John of Germany" in Alsace-Lorraine, married to Elizabeth), but we're not really sure. Anyway, we noticed this town of Loftus on the map, so we drove through it on the extremely remote chance that it might have been founded by his ancestors (or at least cousins of theirs). It turns out that the name Loftus dates back in York to the Norman Conquest. Still, it was a fun drive. We made a quick stop a little later for some food, had tacos back at the house, watched some West Wing, and went to bed.

Another tourist day by ourselves in York. We got up late, and ran to catch the train, which (fortunately) was late. Upon arrival in York, we searched far and wide for a nice little spot to eat breakfast, and finally settled on a bakery/coffee chain. Not great, but we were hungry.

We found our way to the Guildhall, one of the oldest and best preserved guild halls in England. It's really old, and pretty much the same as it was originally, with uneven floors, painted ceiling, and a basement that's had its floor "raised" a few feet due to a rising water table. It's also one of very few guild halls that's got its own chapel.

After that, we went to see Clifford's Tower. That's the last remnant of the old York Castle, and it stands alone on a hill (or, really, just a very small and incredibly steep mound). The castle was sort of odd, in that the "keep" of the castle was at normal ground level, and the tower, well, towered above it. Anyway, the tower was built in a "quatrafoil" pattern (four overlapping circles, it almost looks like a clover in cross-section). All the wood (floors and roof) is gone, but you can walk around the top wall, where you get some great views of the city.

We then returned to the old town center, to have lunch at one of the oldest pubs in the city. After that, we were a little tired, and didn't really want to do much more sight-seeing. So we went back to Monk's Bar, and instead of turning left, we turned right, and finished the walk around the entire city passing through all the remaining gates. By the rail station was the York Railway Museum, which bills itself as the largest railway museum in the world (and it looks it). We spent about an hour looking at all the massive locomotives, and really enjoyed seeing the various Royal cars on exhibit. Then it was a mad dash back to the train station so we could get back in time for a nice dinner at Mario's in Knaresborough. This town is just one train stop west of Harrogate, and the restaurant is one of Matt and Lauren's favorites. After dinner, we drove up to the hill overlooking the town to check out the ruins (lots of ruins in this country), but it was getting late and was actually fairly cold. So we went back to the house, finished up our laundry, and packed for the next big trip.