York

York is a nice town. The temperature here is a bit warmer than surrounding towns. We did a walking tour of the town in the morning (6/2) which was conducted by a local architect. It was quite enlightening because he talked about all sorts of architectural details that help you figure out the age of a building. Further, he showed us where repairs had been made with cement (which doesn’t have any give) and how they caused cracks, compared to those that had been repaired with lime mortar (which does have some give) that allows these old buildings to move.

After that we got tickets to enter York Minster and climb the tower—only 275 steps, so not nearly as much as St. Paul’s 567, but still a lot. We took the guided tour and learned all about how the cathedral is built on Roman barracks from the time of their occupation. Also, they have more medieval stained glass than any other cathedral. They have some from the original Norman cathedral and some from when they rebuilt it in the 1280s. It’s simply beautiful! And, they just had a major organ refurbishment which cost £2 million and took 4 years to do (5,379 pipes to dismantle and clean). This weekend was the debut of the organ so we were very excited!