Happy Birthday GREG!!

We are wishing you a Happy Birthday from Monk Bar. (Bar is the Viking word for gate and gate is the Viking word for road, confusing I know.) Monk Bar dates from the early 14th century and is the biggest and fanciest of York's surviving bars. It comes complete with a working portcullis and winding mechanism and a little "gallery" between the towers from which "missiles and boiling oil could be dropped on attackers." (It's hard to see, but is above the arch right where the center gold thing is)

We hope you have a great birthday... Try not to wound your attackers too badly :)

a Dickens day

I'm sure this won't be the last time, but this morning we woke up to some pretty thick fog. It was really quite dramatic. Most of it lifted quickly, but some of it lingered throughout the day. Pat and I were expecting some Charles-Dickens-like winter weather and I don't think we'll be disappointed.

National Railway Museum

York is home to the largest railway museum in the world complete with "an unrivaled collection of locomotives, rolling stock, railway equipment, documents and records." To top it off, it's the only free museum in the city. Pat and I spent the afternoon yesterday strolling among numerous train engines, passenger cars, and train paraphernalia. They even have a couple of cars built for the Royalty to travel around in which were quite interesting. A true train nut could probably spend days in there. As a train novice, I was there for pretty pictures and an info scan.




(Working wheel demo)



What I can tell you is:
• Really old passenger trains look like someone took the body of three stage coaches, smashed them together, and set them on rails. That was only for the fancy people, third class passengers had unprotected outdoor seating in what looks like a wagon bed on rails.

(Notice the platform on the back for a guard to sit and the rails across the top for the luggage–just like a stage coach)

• Before steam engines, horses pulled the cars uphill and across flat areas. For the downhill, they got to jump in their own little car, complete with water bucket, to rest. Some smart guy realized this improved their efficiency.

• The inside of a train engine is like a huge complex radiator whose sole purpose is to drive the pistons turning the wheels. (A train nut somewhere is groaning at my over-simplified understatement)

(Full-size train cut apart to show how it works)

• Train engines were made from some materials I wouldn't have expected. Some looked like they were made of copper and some had what looked like beadboard cladding–they're quite beautiful when they're all gussied up and sitting in a museum :)


• Toilets did (and some still do) just empty on the tracks so you're not suppose to use them while sitting at a station. Didn't know that and eww... This is changing on some of the more modern trains as they adapt airline toilets for rail use. It will still make me wonder the next time I use one...

• They had signs from 1909 inside some of the engineer cabs saying "Caution: Do not look over or pass along the side of this cab when near bridges, tunnels, loadgauges, or coal stages." I wonder why not.

• Not only is Swindon a town in England, but it's important to the railroad industry.


• The Royal cars are very fancy and are like apartments on wheels. The Queen Mother's car was very simple and austere. Partly because she wanted to travel incognito and not be bombed by Nazi's and partly because of the country's economic situation in the War. Her train came complete with armored window shutters and pulled into train tunnels for protection at night.

What I can't tell you is why...


I think our only disappointment was that you couldn't walk into many things at all. In a lot of places they had raised platforms so you could peak into the windows–looky, no touchy :)

For more information, click the link to go to their site

Black Friday & Snow

To all of those who woke up in the wee hours of the morning to kick-off the shopping season, more power to you. For the rest of you who slept in, congratulations for keeping your sanity.

Of course Black Friday means nothing over here. Apparently the big shopping day here is the day after Christmas. Christmas shopping has been going full steam ahead since right before Halloween here. It's becoming more and more common to see Christmas wrapping paper rolls and Christmas decorations peeking out of the top of shopping bags as I walk to York. The Christmas decorations have been strung up and the windows are in holiday mode. More to come on all of that later.

We were hoping that our cultural lady was right and that the country doesn't celebrate Christmas in the over-indulgent, over-commercialized, over-stressed way that the US does. That doesn't appear to be the case. (Check out the Christmas Craziness commercial by clicking here or by going to the commercial list on the right) Apparently the retailers have learned from their American counterparts and the hype is high although, possibly, not as saturating.

Today I'll decorate our flat with the Christmas decorations we brought over and tomorrow we'll probably head into York for some Christmas cheer. As an appropriately timed start to the season, we had our first dusting of snow this morning. I didn't get to see it fall, but was able to catch it before it melted this morning. Although it's a little hard to see, it is snow and not frost in the photo...


We hope that you're all enjoying your holiday weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We did it! Our very first Thanksgiving dinner on our own!



Granted we didn't have as many dishes as we usually get on our annual double-dinner in Ohio. We also didn't have to deal with the chaos of having lots of people around. For our Thanksgiving, we feasted on a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, spoon bread (our cornbread-like stuffing alternative), peas, rolls, and, of course, pumpkin pie. We opted for the turkey breast since we don't really care for the dark meat and it would fit in our teenie-weenie oven.


This is the "big" portion of the oven. There's another smaller oven on top of this one–it's really only big enough for a casserole dish. It did come in handy having two ovens, though. We don't have that advantage at home.

The turkey came out great despite a temperature gauge malfunction.


And to top it all off, we had some mighty tasty pumpkin pie.


Luckily the cultural lady in Cincinnati tipped us off on that one. You can't buy pumpkin in England so she recommended packing what we would need to make the pie. Thanks cultural lady! Apparently you can't buy ready-made pie crust over here either, or at least we couldn't find it. Pillsbury is not in high demand over here. I ended up combining two pie recipes so we could get the traditional Libby's pumpkin pie filling and a pecan pie crust. It worked out surprisingly well considering I had to make a last-minute butter substitution for the vegetable shortening I realized we didn't have, I used a wine bottle as a rolling pin, and I used expired evaporated milk (we haven't gotten sick yet :).

Pat wished all of his co-workers a Happy Thanksgiving, even the one who said "You know we don't celebrate that, right?" Well duh... He was able to come home a little early and help with the food multi-tasking. We even played a game of Scrabble in between things.

We declare dinner a success. Pat says "Dinner was fantastic. Jamie did a great job!" That's good since we have a TON of leftovers :) But don't worry, we're looking forward to enjoying all of our favorite dishes again next year!

St. Mary's Abbey

Now that the weather is turning, it's time to catch up on all of the great stuff York has to offer...

Not to be left out, York has its own ruined abbey. It's now a rather prominent landscape feature in the Yorkshire Museum Gardens and the occasional picnic spot for moms and rebellious teens. The nice thing about this abbey is that it's close and it's free. Depending on how I go, I can walk past it on my trip home from the city centre.



St. Mary's Abbey was originally founded c1055 as a Benedictine abbey dedicated to St. Olave aka Olaf, King of Norway. That's a Viking dude. It's old. Real old.

According to wikipedia,

The abbots of St Mary's were said to be very decadent and the abbey featured heavily in the early medieval ballads of Robin Hood (with the abbot usually as Robin Hood's nemesis)... St Mary's was once the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England and the abbots were amongst some of the wealthiest landowners.

The wealth and greed of this abbey was its downfall–on several occasions. The name of the main street stretching from my house into the center of York is Bootham. Logically I guess, this name arose from the presence of many booths along the medieval main drag. Similar to the relationship of Mosques and bazaar's, the abbey owned the booths and rented them to vendors to make some dough. The abbey's wealth became so great and the people's standard of living so poor, that the people revolted–I think there might have even been some pitchforks involved. The details are sketchy, but it ended with the abbey building huge walls that connected to the city walls to keep the people out. It effectively became an annex of the city. Today its walls are easily mistaken for the city walls.


The wealth of St. Mary's also drew the eye of Henry VIII and the building came tumbling down. Unlike the Minster, St. Mary's was connected to a monastery so he had an excuse. The ruins, like others, are stunning.




The foundations of the building have been excavated to give you an idea how large it was in its last rendition. Excavated parts of the other buildings, including the Chapter House, can be seen in situ in the basement of the Yorkshire Museum.


This is a view of the abbey standing at what I think is the back of the apse.


Pretty nice. And now us poor peons can see it whenever we want.

chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky
As lucky can be



Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when
I shake 'ands with you
Or blow me a kiss
And that's lucky too



Now as the ladder of life
'As been strung
You may think a sweep's
On the bottommost rung



Though I spends me time
In the ashes and soot
In this 'ole wide world
There's no 'appier bloke



Up where the smoke is
All billered and curled
'Tween pavement and stars
Is the chimney sweep world



When the's 'ardly no day
Nor 'ardly no night
There's things 'alf in shadow
And 'alf way in light
On the roof tops of London
Coo, what a sight!



I choose me bristles with pride
Yes, I do
A broom for the shaft
And a broom for the flume



Though I'm covered with soot
From me 'ead to me toes
A sweep knows 'e's welcome
Wherever 'e goes



Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee!
When you're with a sweep
You're in glad company



No where is there
A more 'appier crew
Than them wot sings
"Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!"
On the chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!

Now, if only I had a magic umbrella...

a Geneva business trip

I've been able to do more work with Landor (my former employer) from the UK and was asked to go to Geneva for a project kick-off. It's really nice to be able to do something professional again, but with the stress that my old team had getting the presentation ready, I'm also glad I'm not there. Since Geneva was a business trip I didn't get out much, but I did bring my camera and have a few shots to share in case you don't get over there.

My first impression of Geneva was a good one. The cab driver that took me to the hotel was quite unusual. She was only the second female driver I've ever had and she was the epitome of European sophistication–wearing a nice dress, well-done hair, trendy sunglasses, boots, the whole nine. She drove a fancy SUV that was perfumed inside and had fashion magazines in the backseat pocket. Ok, so that was a little deceptive. None of the other drivers looked like that and despite my first impression of the clean sophistication of the airport and my driver, the city itself has plenty of graffiti, trash, and seedy areas to bring it back down to earth.

Overall, Geneva is a very attractive place surrounded by Lake Geneva and mountains. I didn't get a great view of the mountains most days since the buildings block them and we had very cloudy, drizzly weather that resulted in the mountains being enveloped as they received a dusting of snow. We even got some flurries in the city on the day I left. Even so, when you did get a peak it was impressive.


The lake is in the bottom left corner and mountains in the upper right.

Our hotel was right next to Lake Geneva so I was able to take some sunrise shots as I trekked to Starbucks in search of breakfast one morning...


Geneva is very French considering it's surrounded by France. It even looks like France might have partial ownership of the lake. The architecture in the city is very formal and what I would consider French, but definitely European. The smaller, residential homes I saw sporatically as I was driven through the city had hints of Swiss chalet.



As you would expect, nearly every large prominent building that I saw was owned by a bank. What did surprise me, however, was how hard it was to find an ATM.

The food was pretty good, although quite expensive. We went to a "traditional" Swiss place one night and had the "festival of ravioli," which is a Landor tradition. It's an assortment of mostly cheese ravioli, tortellini, and penne covered with more cheese and baked. Fondue also seemed quite popular there. The next night we went to the Old Town section of Geneva for dinner and I had a tasty beef filet and frittes (maybe real "French" fries) that were very good.

I didn't get to see much of the Old Town, but this a square.


Besides cheese and chocolate, Geneva is famous for the Jet d’Eau. It started out as a practical pressure release for some water turbines on the Rhone river and, having proved a popular tourist attraction, it became decorative and was moved to a more prominent location in the lake.

Today, the height of the jet is an incredible 140m, with 500 litres of water forced out of the nozzle every second at about 200kph. Each drop takes sixteen seconds to complete the round-trip from nozzle to lake and, on windy days, the plume can rapidly drench the surroundings...

It's also pretty when illuminated at night.


And finally, there was one funny sign. I just couldn't resist. Apparently the Swiss stick men are in an especially big hurry to escape the impending doom of fire or of their own fumes :)

Happy Birthday SHAWN!!

This is the Millenium Bridge crossing the River Ouse south of York. It's the most attractive piece of modern architecture in the city so, of course, we thought of you.

We hope that you are having a fantastic birthday!

speaking of funny...

Greg dug up this list of the "Most ridiculous British laws." Pat and I laughed pretty hard, so we though we'd make it "front page" news in case you're not reading the comments...

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down.

3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store.

4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day.

5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter.

6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet.

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail of the queen.

8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing.

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour.

10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

We have heard versions of #10 (we are in York, of course). We heard that the Scotsman doesn't necessarily have to be armed, but just identified within the city walls. There are two versions of the rules for killing him 1) you must use a bow and arrow, but can be anywhere within the walls when you do it or 2) you must be standing ON the wall with your bow and arrow. Other people add a qualifier that it can't be done on Sunday. Our "house rule"--we say you have to shoot from the walls to make it more of a challenge. We don't care what day.

On doing some "weird news" web research, I found some more information on this strange subject. Believe what you want...

As a matter of fact, England is lucky anybody visits its towns, since York might not be alone in allowing profiling-based, archery-enhanced homicide. According to Mundayweb.com, Welshmen can still be shot with a longbow if found in Hereford, (but not on Sunday). And "in Chester you can only shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow inside the city walls and after midnight."

funny signs, part 2

It's that time again. I'm getting a backlog of "funny" photos. Today's topic is road signs. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of some of these pictures as I am not accustomed to taking pictures of small objects from a moving object going 70mph and keeping it in focus--much to Pat's frustration :) I'm sure there will be more road signs, but to get started...


My absolute favorite. It speaks on so many levels, yet as a road sign it is relatively ambiguous.


Pat and I had a debate about this one. I say "yield to windsocks," he says "caution wind." I concede that he's right, but it's funnier my way!


This one speaks for itself--I like the addition of the stick man.


This one doesn't make much sense to me (small airplane on left side). If Pat doesn't take heed when an airplane lands on the motorway, I'll let you know.


We took great care getting this one in focus since we smile every time we see it--sorry Grandma. This one raises so many questions. These are always in pairs and seem to be marking the beginning and end of some type of imaginary crossing zone, but why? Where are the elderly coming from? Why would they want to cross in a designated zone? Why would they want to cross a motorway, which are usually much busier than this one appears, when they clearly can't run? (Note the thin little cane) I've looked, but I don't see any obvious nursing homes or even really very many residential buildings near these signs. It's not like they have to cross the street to get their mail. If I ever see an elderly person crossing the motorway and causing a traffic snarl, I'll let you know.


Warning--attack sheep! No seriously, these little free-ranging guys have access to the road in this area and you really do have to keep your eyes open to keep the wool off your bumper. There are similar signs for cows. Cows even get their own stoplights in some areas so that they can be safely herded across motorways. You certainly don't want to hit one of those suckers.


Then there's those pesky people. They can be quite dangerous too.


Just put your mind in the gutter...


The original one and only?? I doubt it, this is just a side street, but interesting all the same.

For a look at the last batch of funny signs, click on this link for the archived post

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November!

This is the night to have fireworks and bonfires "to commemorate the failure, in the year 1605, of an attempt to assassinate the king and Parliament." Some of these celebrations even have burning effigies of the most famous perpetrator, Guy Fawkes. According to our British cultural lady in the US, celebrating a failed terrorism plot is the only excuse the British have come up with for a good firework show.

And you know how people love fireworks! Fireworks are legal here and they even sell them at the grocery store this time of year. While buying our weekly foodstuff, we heard an announcement that you can only buy fireworks AFTER you buy your groceries. Good thing... you know how people get the itch to set them off as soon as they get them in their sweaty hands :)

From what I understand, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated a little differently in York. We had sporadic fireworks shooting out of people's backyards Saturday and Sunday night, but you won't see any large scale celebrations or burning effigies. You see, Guy Fawkes was born and raised here so they're not too keen on burning him at the stake every year.


There's a plaque on this church whose last line proclaims that, among other things, "Guy Fawkes was baptized here on 16th April 1570."



So instead of watching a doll burn, we'll celebrate the day by watching V for Vendetta and consider the possibility that he was a hero, not a villain. As Hollywood so eloquently states...

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

the ever-setting sun

It became very obvious when we got back from the states how far north we are. The sun is very low on the horizon already, making it feel like the sun's setting all day long. It does make for some interesting light effects and really long shadows...


This was taken in the morning. Not that unusual for sunrise I suppose, although it's probably 10am or so.


This was taken at noon. Not too much change--still long shadows.


This was taken in the afternoon, probably around 3:00ish.


And done. I think this was about 4:30 or so.

We just had daylight savings so now the sun starts to set around 4ish and is pitch black by 5. Winter should be really interesting. According to a planner Pat has, the sun is suppose to rise in London at 7:44am on Dec. 1 and set at 3:55pm. Keep in mind we're still farther north and Dec. 1 is before the shortest day of the year. According to one of our travel books, there's an average of 1.5 hrs. of sunlight each day in January (clouds + dark = no sun). Stay tuned. It should be a long, dark winter. Glad I brought my tripod :)

Pat documented the reverse when he arrived in July. For a reminder, click on this link back to that archived post.