I love learning about history! I remember when I was in school history was my favorite subject. I loved learning about how America and other countries worked. At one point I was learning about New York State history and I found the early days of my state to be interesting. I didn’t realize Manhattan was an island until that course. In that course, I also learned that Manhattan was once called New Amsterdam until The Duke of York wanted to buy it and then named it after himself and that is how it became New York along with all five boroughs and Upstate.
And with that little bit of history that you may or may not have known, I have always wondered what York, England looked like. Obviously, it wasn’t going to look anything like New York, but still, I wanted to see what it looked like as my state was named after it. This is something that I have wanted to do for years now. Last week my husband and I were finally able to take a trip to York, England. It is a beautiful old city surrounded by ancient walls. And it has its own Abbey Ruin which made it even more enjoyable to walk around and take in the scenery.
While in York we stayed at the Guy Fawkes Inn. In all honesty, I’ve heard the name before, but really had no idea who this guy was until recently. Basically, he tried to blow up their parliament, got caught, and got his punishment, and the people of England love to celebrate that. The Inn we stayed at is possibly where he lived. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I can tell you that, that Inn is a very, very old place and it shows.
We did enjoy walking up and down the old streets of York even though it was cold. There are lots of different stores to go in and wander around, like one of my favorites Ecco. There is a chocolate store where you can get drinkable milk chocolate in a tiny dark chocolate cup which is difficult to eat. I did manage a couple of bites, but it was too rich for me to eat the entire thing. There are also a bunch of restaurants to eat at which apparently for most of them if you don’t have a reservation good luck on getting in. We did enjoy breakfast at one of those restaurants though. It was nice and warm and cozy to sit in considering it was raining that particular morning.
I can’t forget about the Shambles area of old York. That street is packed day or night. The stores there were purposely built to be so close to each other on the top part, which I think makes it the most unique set of buildings I’ve ever seen. That street is also where that chocolate store is I mentioned in the paragraph above. I honestly don’t know if we got to explore all of old York since we were only there for two days, but what I did see I enjoyed. I think I would like to go back there again one day. I would probably want to stay in a different hotel, but other than that I definitely enjoyed visiting Old York finally.
Kathleen Smith is the author of Miscarriages: My Journey From Heartache to Healing, and other books. Blogs about a variety of things. Her podcast is Kathleens Korner and she is the CEO of BearsWithApps. OH, let’s not forget her YouTube channel