Time For Another Atlantic Crossing!
We’re off to the UK again! Time for a new blog.
This time we’re in London from September 8th to 16th, then York from September 16th to 22nd. We had not planned to make a UK trip until next year, but changed our minds a few months ago and decided to bump this location up on our travel agenda for 2024.
Why Visit York?
We are especially excited to finally be visiting York. For so many years we have tried to get to York, but it never happened for one reason or another.
There’s so much history in this city, as it’s been inhabited for over 8,000 years. Given its Roman roots and Viking heritage, York offers a real mix of culture and history. It’s one of England’s finest and most beautiful historic cities, and is also Britain’s Home of Chocolate (my kind of place). It’s also the most haunted city in Europe.
York is an ancient city whose walls have been well preserved. York’s city walls, built in the 13th century, stretch over two miles and are among the best-preserved walls in Europe. And of course, there’s York’s crown jewel: the fabulous York Minster, a magnificent cathedral showcasing medieval architecture at its finest. The Minster is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe, taking over 250 years to complete.
Travel Plans
This trip we will be doing a Toronto-London return flight. Reaching London on September 9th, we’ll base ourselves there until September 16th. At that point we’ll take a Grand Central Railway train to York in the north of England, where we’ll visit until September 21st. On that date we’ll take a return train to London, staying the last night of the trip there before heading home to Toronto from Heathrow Airport on September 22nd.
Notes On The Blog
Initially I wasn’t going to blog the London segment of our trip; I’ve been to London so many times I didn’t know if, or how, I could create yet another London blog and keep it interesting. London, however, being one of the most fascinating cities in the world, always offers something interesting around every corner. The longer one stays in London the more fun and quirky things will be encountered – so I thought…. blog it, baby! Why not?
For ease of reading I’ve combined our London and York experiences into one continuous and cohesive narrative, rather than splitting the two city adventures up over two different blogs. I think it reads better as one blog. Also, the daily posts will be written in retrospect after we return home; that way I can dedicate more time and detail to them rather than publishing quickly while “on the road”. For those of you faithfully subscribed to my site (thank you!), you will receive a new post notification when I publish a new post for this trip. I’m planning to publish roughly a post per day, up to the end of the trip.
For this blog you will see a “step count” listed at the end of each day’s post. This year Vince and I have been dutifully tracking our daily steps to ensure we get around 8,000 or more steps a day – medical experts consider this amount an ideal goal for daily exercise. We always cover a lot of ground on any given trip anyway, so this trip I thought it would be interesting to track our steps and see just how much ground we actually cover each day.
As with all my “wanderings”, this blog is a casual, daily diary of our trip and nothing more. I’m not a professional writer or photographer. My blog is by no means a serious travel guide or reference; I’ve created it simply for fun, posterity, and because, well, I wanted to dammit!!
Enjoy.
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