York Chocolate Story * English Tea * York Castle Museum * Clifford Tower
We actually spent most of our day in York. This wasn't the original plan, we had intended to get to Cambridge early, but our plan changed when we were unable to get tickets to the Warner Brother Harry Potter studio tour on Tuesday (mea culpa). We have them now for Wednesday which started a travel domino effect..... We changed the rental car return to later, thus adding a 1/2 day extra sight seeing in York, an extra night at the Youth Hostel in Cambridge and an extra 1/2 day there, as well as canceling a night in London (down from 6 to 5 nights) and losing a day of sight seeing in London. Aargh - one little mistake and all that headache. But, I think we'll manage with 5 nights in London and having more time in York and Cambridge has worked out.
York is quaint and the old town area is fun to explore. We did a very touristy thing this morning and took a "tour" of the York chocolate experience. Apparently chocolate was a big industry in York in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s the Kit Kat was even invented in York. For a long time Nestle had a factory here. We enjoyed the history lesson on chocolate and the many samples that came with the tour. We got sucked in and bought even more chocolate at the gift shop afterwards. But, we all know there is no such thing as too much chocolate.
Our group split along the sexes for lunch and I took the girls to a beautiful English garden for a tradition English Tea (in our case lemonade) and Eric took the books for a sausage roll and pork pie. We loved our English tea of dainty sandwiches with no crusts, biscuits with jam and clotted cream, and 4 kinds of tiny desserts; creme brûlée, cheese cake, chocolate brownie, and an almond raspberry cake. It was great mother daughter time. We met the boys at the York Castle Museum where we enjoyed many different exhibits - a toy exhibit from the 1850s to present, dresses from the same time era, a re-created Victorian town where we could go visit the shops (we visited the medicine shop and saw real leeches in a jar that might have been for sale). There was also a 1960s exhibit, a WWI and a dungeon exhibit (as the museum was housed in what was the former prison of York). It was eclectic, but the exhibits were nice and enjoyable.
It took us about 3 hours to get to Cambridge. We are staying in a Youth Hostel here, but there are plenty of families running around. It's fun and funny to share living space with people from all over the world and whom you've never meet. We have 1 family room for me and Maren on down. Stewart and Eric are in the men's dormitories. There is a commons room with tables and wifi, a communal kitchen with all the basic (we keep our groceries labeled on a shelf and in the fridge), and a laundry room to share. Cambridge is bustling with people, most of them on bikes.
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