Great Britain v3

 We passed our COVID tests and got through check in and security. We had a delightful lunch at Wagamama and are now waiting for our gate to be posted :)

 Today we spent about 5 hours in the National Gallery. Bob and Tommy had fun looking at paintings and I had fun playing games on my phone and following them around hahaha I did look up to see the Van Gogh paintings but that’s about my limit. They have excellent wifi there too so I was happy :) Tomorrow we begin our journey home. We booked our COVID tests at the airport. It’ll be interesting hauling all our stuff on the tube to Paddington to catch the Heathrow Express. We looked at taking a taxi but Google told us it would take at least 45 minutes to go the 2 miles to Paddington, as opposed to 15 minutes on the tube. So tube it is. Wish us luck! :)

 It’s hard to talk about a cathedral without pictures. I’ll post some once we get home, I promise! While we were there a band started setting up for an evening concert. We were lucky enough to still be there when they started practicing. When the organ joined in, let me tell you, it rattled my brains! I got a couple videos, it was really cool! We have two days left in London. Tomorrow we have a reservation for the British Museum and Monday we are going to the National Gallery. We’ll fit in a stop at the British Library one afternoon and possibly a stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Last night we wandered over to Westminster to see Big Ben and walk around a bit, I’ll post pictures of that too when we get home :)

 Yesterday we started the day at the Tower of London. We spent a very enjoyable hour or so being yelled at by a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) as he took us around the grounds and gave us the history of the tower. He said they had no idea where the Beefeater name comes from.  We saw lots of armor from past kings, the tower where prisoners were held and The Crown Jewels.  Afterwards we made haste to the Museum of London but unfortunately they closed before we could get through the whole museum. They have a Victorian Street which has shop fronts and a “garden” with dress displays. They also had a section showing living rooms through the ages, I’ll post pictures when we get home, it was pretty cool. We had dinner at Pizza Pilgrims but it just made me sad it wasn’t Dough Eyed in York haha Today we are going to Portobello Road to do some shopping and looking then we are going to the Churchill War Rooms in the afternoon!

 To anybody who is still looking at this blog, we have come to a point in our trip where the wifi has let us down. Our AirBnB in London has the most terrible slow wifi so we might not be posting pictures while we’re here…. We’ll keep you posted, if you’re still around ;)  We are trying to decide what we want to see while we’re here and make our reservations. Most things make you book your tickets ahead to reserve an entry time.  We are also planning on taking a walk this evening, we are about half a mile from Buckingham Palace so we’ll go say hi then wander on our way!

Today we went to St. Giles Cathedral, saw some paintings and went on a " Doomed Dead and Buried " Mercat Ghost Tour and ended the day at the Albanach with another whisky flight, a couple beers, a sticky toffee pudding and five whole onion rings.  St. Giles Cathedral is small but very pretty.  We went to the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) that has a decent number of paintings. Our time there was mercifully short for Libby. The building is from the mid-nineteenth century, and is currently under some external work. There were signs apologizing for any noise, but I heard none. The SNG seems to be part of the UK's free arts program where a number of museums are free to enter. The range and chronological scope the collection covers is impressive. They do focus on Early Modern works (so 15th-18th century), but have a fair amount of pieces from medieval triptychs (Libby's favorites (eye roll)), and even has a Davinci and piece from the Raphael workshop. The name of the Rapha...

 We've arrived in Scotland. The train ride from York was about 2.5 hours of scenic fields and lambs, lots of baby lambs in the fields. We passed by Durham and I got a picture of it's cathedral. We walked up a bunch of stairs to get from the train station to The Royal Mile, our AirBnB is about half a block off the Royal Mile, just around the corner from St. Giles Cathedral. It's a really good location. The only downside is the Royal Mile is just one long huge hill haha. Nice going down, not so much going back up haha We got an early dinner then walked around a bit to explore. Tommy got his whisky flight to start our visit here :) Tomorrow we'll visit a couple museums I think and we booked a g-g-g-ghooooost walking tour for tomorrow called Doomed, Dead & Buried. Unfortunately the tour starts at 6:30 so it will be good and bright out! 

 Today was pretty low key. We had breakfast at Lucky Day, went to the Yorkshire Museum, I made intelligent purchase decisions, we waded back through the hoards, strolled part of the medieval wall, and had some burritos at our place.  The Yorkshire Museum is built on/in the ruins of Saint Mary's Abbey which is one of Libby's favorite abbeys. A funny thing happened on the way to the museum. We came across a pavilion with a handful of birds of prey inside. They were funding the the rehabilitation of the birds that come within their care by charging to hold the birds and take pictures or have a "flight experience". I'm not sure what the latter was, but spoiler alert, Libby and I both held owls. Libby held this tiny Tawny owl that was full grown at ten weeks, but so tiny and cute. I held what I think is a Great Horned owl. The big owl got heavy after a while but it was really fun to see them up close. There was also a Barn Owl which was small and pretty chill, and a Ha...

Happy Birthday to my favorite travel partner in the world!!!!! As a gift, I decided to let him take the evening off from blog writing :) throwback to 2012 After an exciting breakfast in which I set off the smoke alarm and ran outside with the frying pan, we made our way to the York Minster. We were just in time for Tommy and I to do The Tower Challenge. York's tower is 275 narrow steps, compared to Bath which is 212. Well worth it though for the views! The ruins of St Mary's is between the towers, we're going there tomorrow narrow steps see Tommy? After we completed The Challenge we rejoined Bob and took a guided tour of the minster. Our guide's background was engineering so he put an engineering spin on his tour which was fun. We learned that the choir is 3 feet off center from the nave because they built it from the outside in and miscalculated. We couldn't go into the middle of the nave, it was being set up for a banquet. It's hard to see, but there are 5 kin...

Today we went to York's National Railway Museum , and Jorvik , had some local brew, and some grandelicious pizza.  That's your tl;dr.  Tommy needed coffee to write this and as a result the caffeine took over.  You've been warned . 

 We've arrived at York. After a tasty, albeit large, breakfast at Art Cafe  (across from the Lebanese restaurant we went to last night), we returned to the accommodation and set off for the train ride, almost four hours, to York.  Here's our view: After we arrived at the new accommodation and unpacked we set off to get lost in York's Shambles . York feels a lot more comfortable than Oxford. I don't really think the Oxford place was that much further from "things" than our place is to "things" here in York, but it feels like we are less on the periphery and we are much more comfortable here. For me personally, and this might be a bit TMI, but I think I felt a mixture of anemoia   and nostalgia for my time at Western .  York is fun though. The first shop we found was a Harry Potter  themed shop with everything from scented candles, to robes and expensive stylized wands. We then stumbled across a shop that served alcoholic (and non) Harry Potter  themed...