A Purveyance of Draughts for Emotional Ailments

 Sunday here in York is quite a bit quieter than yesterday which is a bit of a relief. It’s easier to get down the narrow roads and to walk on the sidewalks—we forget how pedestrian traffic on its own can create a bottleneck.

We started out the day by visiting the Jorvik Centre which is all about the Vikings. In the 1960s and 1970s when doing some excavating work the local York people came across an entire Viking village in the archaeological dig. Over the last five or six decades the Jorvik Centre has worked on educating tourists with a few different iterations of visiting the Viking village. The one currently in use (others were destroyed by floods) ties advantages of technology and modern practices to create a scene to look into  Viking history. It actually has an underground monorail type ride that takes you through a recreated Viking village. In many ways it reminded us of an educational ride, but Paris Disneyland style. We learned that the Viking streets in the village could be a pretty stinky place and saw representations of the Vikings in their shops and homes and communities. 

After the Viking tour we walked around the wall that surrounds the city of York. Well we didn’t do all of it it, but most of it. In the afternoon we explored the neighbourhood closed off to vehicular traffic. There are some unique shops here and we stumbled upon one this afternoon and it was very entertaining.

View from one of the bridges in York

Dare I say an aging tourist walking the wall. 

Examples of the new developments of renovated buildings. 

Another perspective on York Minster undergoing a big renovation. 

More walking along the wall minus the aging tourist—who we assure you did not fall off the wall, unlike Humpty Dumpty. 

York development seems to really focus on renovations of the old building stock. There are some gorgeous new residences beside the river. 

Not sure if you can read the window sign: it says, “A Poetic Licence for the Purveyance of Draughts, Tonics and Prescriptions of Verse.” My kind of place!

We ended the afternoon by attending the Choral Evensong Service at York Minster. There was a visiting choir called the Saffron Choir that was substituting for the York Minster choir. They were so talented. It was a beautiful service in an incredible building. The sound of the organ from where we sat in the choir stalls was unbelievable. The church bells rang much of the afternoon.