Happy Birthday SARAH!!

This quirky little tidbit about York made us think of you!

There happen to be cat statues integrated into the architecture sporadically throughout the city. Some are perched on window sills or railings, some scale buildings, some stalk pigeon statues on rooftops. Apparently the older ones date back to the early 1800s and people speculate that they may have been added to amuse, attract people to shops, or simply to scare pigeons away. More recently, a York architect by the name of Tom Adams used them as a signature element on the many of the buildings he worked on. (Check out this link for more info)

Here's a detail shot since it's a little hard to see in the birthday photo...


In addition to cat statues, York seems to have a fairly active cat society with a store dedicated solely to feline knicknaks and a charity shop whose proceeds go to cat shelters.

This is all a long-winded way of saying Happy Birthday! We hope you have a great one!

Burns Night

Now we can say we've eaten haggis.

Burns night is a traditional Scottish dinner, held on or near January 25th, to celebrate the life of Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet from the 1700s. He wrote Auld Lang Syne, among other things, and is a cultural icon.

One of Pat's Scottish co-workers, Duncan, and his wife, Jane, invited us to their home on Sunday for a Burns Night celebration. Duncan was the only Scot among us, so only one kilt in attendance and just a little bagpipe-playing on CD. A traditional dinner is filled with ceremony, speeches to the lasses and laddies, poetry, singing, and even dancing. Our dinner was a little more laid back.

After a soup appetizer, Duncan did the ceremonial presentation of the main course, haggis. This includes a Burns poem, Address to a Haggis, and the ritual slitting of the sheep stomach casing. Traditionally, neeps (mashed turnips) and tatties (mashed potatoes) accompany the main course.

It looks a little like this (picture courtesy of the internet—I draw the line at whipping out a camera at a private dinner).


There was also a pasta alternative to Haggis incorporating some Scottish salmon. I surprised myself by liking the haggis and neeps. Haggis is not as much like sausage as I expected. The sheep stomach casing is used to contain the rather loose contents while it's cooked. Once you cut it open, you scoop out the insides to eat and leave the stomach. I thought it had a lot more flavor than I would have expected and was actually quite good. Pat liked it at first, but his enthusiasm went down as dinner progressed. I surmise that was because he was sitting next to the slit stomachs and I wasn't.

Dinner was followed by scotch (of course) and desert—one was a rhubarb crumble with a shortbread topping and the other a chocolate pear cake. Both were quite good. During dinner you're suppose to read Burns poetry, but, with the exception of Duncan, we were all more than a little intimidated by the Scotisms—I certainly wouldn't know where to begin from a pronunciation standpoint. We all weaseled our way out of it. For example, I was suppose to read To A Mouse, a poem Burns wrote after uncovering the nest of a field mouse with his plough. Even if I could say it, there's little chance of me understanding it. Here's the first stanza...

Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

It was a good night. Everyone was very nice which made it pretty comfortable. We even drove through a town called "Friendly" on the way there that had Friendly Fish & Chips and The Friendly Hotel. Guess that says it all.

In case you desire your own haggis, we did discover the best brand is MacSweens—you'll just have to come over here to have it. I found out that the US has banned real haggis due to potential health risks associated with some of the ingredients. The haggis you find in the US isn't a traditional recipe and has been altered to comply.

Residents First Weekend

Although more tourists than residents, we do have library cards which entitle us to events during York's Residents First Weekend. Being the "European Tourism City of the Year," York caters to tourists. However, they also set aside one weekend at the end of January for the residents to experience some of the city's sights at discounted rates or for free. That works out especially well for the tourist part of us.

With 42 participating sights and organizations, we managed to see a few new things. We concentrated on the things in town that you usually have to pay for and that didn't have ridiculous lines. On Saturday, we saw the Richard III museum consisting of a poorly designed exhibit examining whether he was truly a villain or just misunderstood. Thumbs down. Looks like someone went crazy with a laminator and plastered the place with letter-sized pages—total information overload. The most interesting thing about it was that it is housed inside Monk Bar (one of the gateways in the city wall). It's the only Bar where the floors still exist and you can climb them all. Being able to see the architecture, the portucullis mechanism, and the guard/potty chambers was the best part.

Then we went to Hungate, the current archaeological dig in what were York slums. This is a site that will become apartments after 2012, but before it does they are digging down as far as they can to learn about the history of the area. They are in the relatively early stages and have uncovered the Victorian layer across the whole thing and are down to the medieval layer in some areas. The hope is to uncover some Viking artifacts as they get lower. Ironically, the construction barricade surrounding the site had better information than you got from walking through the dig itself. You were also able to see some of the finds extracted from the site which included some combs, game pieces, dishes, shoe soles, and a bone skate. Apparently the Vikings introduced ice skating to England and, in that time, it's thought that the rivers iced over on a regular basis. They made the skate blades from an animal femur with some minor modifications. The only downside to animal bone skates is that if you stay in one place too long, you stick to the ice.

After that, we joined a walking tour of York. We saw and learned some interesting things including...
• An original Georgian building feature was a torch snuffer (the black cone on the right of the doorway in this picture. After carrying a fiery torch with you to light up the dark streets at night, what do you do with it when you get to your destination? Why snuff it of course. Then you deposit it into an umbrella-like stand by the entrance. How polite. Even today, the British call flashlights torches.


• A group of the richest families in York commissioned the Assembly Rooms in 1730 for their private balls and social gatherings. It was trendy at the time and allowed them to strut their stuff and meet the "right people." It is thought to probably be the "...earliest neo-classical building in Europe." It still looks much like it did then and now holds an Italian restaurant—pretty fancy digs for pizza and pasta.


• York has 19 surviving medieval churches, the most in England after the bombing of WWII. Originally there were "...40 churches, eight monasteries and friaries and countless chapels and chantries" in medieval times.

• York had the first hospital in England, first built in around the 10th century. Towards the end of its life-span, it occupied 4 acres and is thought to have been the largest in Northern England. Some of the remnants of St. Leonard's Hospital can still be seen in the Museum Gardens.


• York is home to Rowntree Limited who invented the KitKat, among other candies. Nestlé acquired Rowntree and now produces the KitKat for everywhere except the US (Hershey makes it there). There's still a Nestlé factory here in York and, sometimes when the wind is right, the air smells like baking cookies when you go outside. I can think of worse things :)

On Sunday we went to Barley Hall, a medieval building largely forgotten as the city grew around it.

Excavation in the 1980s revealed that under this jumble was a surviving example of a medieval townhouse, originally the town house of the Priors of Nostell but later to be the townhouse of its best known inhabitant, Alderman William Snawsell, goldsmith and Mayor of York. It has now been restored to how it looked at the time of Alderman Snawsell, towards the end of the fifteenth century.

It has been very faithfully restored using evidence found in the excavations and 15th century techniques. They have even recreated a horn window, which they say might be the only horn window in England. Apparently they soak cow's horns until the white exterior becomes pliable, strip it off of the bony inside, and roll it into strips. The strips are then overlapped to create a semi-translucent window. In that time, it was a much cheaper alternative to glass and was used in the lesser rooms of Barley Hall.


Horn was also used as an early lamination device. Thin strips were placed on top of fragile parchment in early "textbooks" to make them more durable.

My Soapbox*

If you don't want to hear my somewhat depressing rantings, just skip this entry.

In the spirit of England, I'll climb up on my soapbox. I can't help myself. Granted I'm not at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park actually standing on a box, like so many people do on a daily basis, but I dragged one out into the living room. Everyone has a bias. Mine is that I was never excited about the invasion of Afghanistan, was adamantly against the invasion of Iraq as just plain stupid, and have hated the Bush Administration from day 1.

I'm not alone here in England. I'm sure it doesn't surprise any of you after seeing Britain's oust of Tony Blair, Bush and the war are not popular. While we've been here, we've seen fictional documentary-like movies on the subject. One was filmed as if President Bush had been assassinated and projected the aftermath... would America be able to survive? Come on—bet they didn't show that one in the states :) (Just in case you're wondering, it happens outside of a hotel in Chicago, the Sheraton maybe?) The movie reminded me of the interviews and speculations you saw post-JFK. Another movie was about Tony Blair and his supposed guilty conscience during/after his time in office. Didn't watch that one, can't comment.

Tonight was different. I just watched a real documentary that made me cry. Actually cry. Why? Because I'm American. Because of the bull-headed, know-it-alls that we think we are. Or that the Bush Administration thinks they are. I doubt they have shown this in the States, but maybe I should try to be optimistic for a change and hope they have.

It's called True Stories: No End in Sight. I know, even the title's uplifting. It was a very rational, logical examination of Iraq's "reconstruction." I expected it to be a British perspective and was curious. It seems to have been created by Americans. For 2 hours, they interviewed a ton of military, state department, OCHA, CPA, UN, Middle East experts, on-the-ground reporters, and local people who were involved. Most of the higher level people were associated with the government at one time or another, until their opinions and expertise no longer agreed with the administration and were dismissed one way or another. Of course the big players declined interviews. The information and perspectives they provided filled in the gaps in the news reporting I've seen and actually made the chaos now happening in Iraq seem a logical conclusion to a totally *$%#ed-up process.

I think the three things that really hit home for me were...

1) In WWII, the US was planning the occupation of Germany for 2 YEARS. For Iraq, they planned for 60 DAYS and in that time had to start at 0, meaning they didn't even have computers, desks, or proper staff on day 1.

2) When Bremer took over the Green Zone, most of the team was replaced with graduates who were put in charge of major components of reconstruction. Yes, idiots in their early 20s looking for adventure, whose parents had political connections or donated money to the proper campaigns. In one interview, a Professor happened to be in the building and was shocked to run into one of his students that just graduated. "She couldn't believe her luck, she was put in charge of traffic planning for Baghdad." He asked if she'd ever done that before because it was so important and drastically needed. Of course she said no. Only our best! Now I'm all for giving young people opportunities to learn and grow, but give me a break. When I was that age, I was freaked out to have been put in charge of designing signs for a retail store. Relatively meaningless. And I wasn't really in charge.

3) The border forts, or whatever they were called, that were built by the military were built in something like 5 weeks and cost something like $200,000. The ones built by private contractors took something like a year and cost $1.2 million.

Now, like I said this was a very logical examination of the reconstruction, analyzing the major pitfalls and turning points. This wasn't Fahrenheit 9/11. It wasn't outwardly inflammatory. I think it was all the more disturbing because of that, because it feels closer to fact. Hindsight's 20/20, but there's no excuse here. We just should have known better. There is absolutely no excuse to ignore the vast majority of your experts, to not read any of the reports that have been prepared, to disregard what people on the ground are saying. They ended it with a marine who has fought there and says "Don't tell me that's the best America can do. That just makes me angry." Me too. I just had to go to another country to learn why.

* As a disclaimer, these are my opinions, not necessarily Pat's. He hates when I'm tempted to use this forum as a soapbox, but he's asleep. For all of you that disagree with me, and I'm sure there are a few, it doesn't mean we can't still be friends :)

funny signs, part 4

Ok, these aren't really signs. There more miscellaneous "curiosities," but you get the idea... They're funny.


Meet Henry, the Numatic vacuum. He has a pink partner in cleaning. She gets eyelashes to make her more feminine and is named Hetty.


On further investigation, Henry also comes in green, red, and blue. James, Charles, and George are also part of the family. Click on this link for a closer look


Peruvians with an identity crisis. They appear to be wearing pseudo-Great Plains outfits while playing Peruvian music and are selling dream-catchers next to their Peruvian CDs. Ok, really, what was the problem with exploiting their own Incan heritage?


A York traffic jam. The two cars in the foreground are parked. The truck is at least halfway onto the narrow sidewalk.


More driving obstacles. I've never seen trees planted IN the street. I guess there's a possibility the trees were there first. There are dashed lines indicating parking areas between them.


Well it IS the corner of Cowgate silly (aka Cow Street)!


Although this might give you the idea that England is overly politically correct...


Think again. This seems to be part of a popular collectible series.

the shambles

aka the medieval Butcher's street





The Shambles is a tourist must-see and is considered one of the "most visited streets" in the UK. The street itself is just a short stretch of maybe 100 yards although the name also applies to the short adjoining alleys, some of which have buildings of the same age. The street has a colorful history and is special simply because it survived, unlike others that would have been even older. The York Shambles website (yes, they even have their own website) offers a pretty concise synopsis...

Mentioned in the Domesday book (making it date over 900 years), we know Shambles to be York's oldest street, and Europe's best preserved Medieval street....

The word Shambles originates from the Medieval word Shamel, which meant booth or bench. It was once also referred to as Flesshammel, a word with meaning around flesh; this is because Shambles was historically a street of butchers shops and houses. Records state that in 1872 there were 26 butchers on the street....

Livestock was slaughtered on Shambles also, the meat was served over what are now the shop window bottoms, and these were originally the Shamels.

It is also interesting to notice the way the pavements on either side of the street are raised up, this was done to create a channel which the butchers would wash away their waste through; offal and blood would gush down Shambles twice weekly.

Shambles was actually a generic term for an open-air slaughterhouse or meat market and several cities in England use the name—York just happens to be the most famous. It's thought that the current definition of the word "shambles" (a scene or a state of great destruction or confusion) is derived from the association with the act of butchering and the mess leftover from the process. I think it also seems to apply to the odd jumble of buildings on the street.


This picture shows how people used to get past space and building restrictions back in the 1400s. If you couldn't build into the street to gain more space, step out over it. Word is people can shake hands across the street if they lean out the windows. This building technique just provided more ammunition for the Great Fire in London, among others I'm sure, and was banned.


The buildings are all genuine—no Disney here. Notice the huge wood timbers and wooden pegs holding them together.


Some of the buildings retain the hardware used for displaying the meat.


Here you can see the benches, or wide window bottoms, used for meat transactions.


This is an example of how short these buildings really are. In some cases, I have to duck in order to enter the buildings. I believe realtors would characterize them as "cozy and full of charm."


If you want to see more, click on this link for a 360˚ tour.

saggy architecture

Not the official term I know, but nonetheless effective. York seems to be running an experiment to see how far a building can lean, in how many directions, before it actually falls. I've never seen so much brick that looks like butter...

















There are numerous examples of this saggy architecture as you wander around the city. Many that the camera just can't capture. It often looks like my lens is just warping things. In some cases, the leaning walls can feel a little disorienting as you walk through the buildings. In others, it just looks like Disney got a hold of it.

To judge whether or not these buildings are actively moving, the York structural engineers have a simple, yet highly effective, solution. They cement small rectangles of glass over problem areas to see how long it takes to crack as the building moves. This is actually how they decided to do major repair on the central Minster tower—those little pieces were busting apart almost immediately.

the British Museum

Last Friday Pat took the day off and we headed down to London for the day. We had tickets for the Terracotta Warrior Exhibit and felt lucky to have them. When I bought the tickets a couple of months ago, all of the weekends were already gone for the entire duration of the show and the weekdays were starting to go fast. We learned that tickets are all but sold out now and they are now keeping the exhibit open until midnight due to the demand.

There are a couple of reasons this show is so special. As the Times Online states, after "...years of diplomacy and planning, this exhibition represents the biggest display of terracotta warriors yet to be lent outside China." I think that the British Museum display is particularly good because you can get so close. It's also dramatically lit to draw out all of the incredible surface detail. In China, you view the warriors in mass from the top of the excavation pits and are never really able to appreciate the details. Besides, I'm not really interested in ever trekking to the middle of China. A two-hour train ride and a walk in the rain to a museum suits me just fine.

The exhibit consisted of a sampling of Generals, Archers, Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Chariots and Charioteers, Calvary, Horses, a Stable Boy, Civil Officials, Acrobats, a Strong Man, Musicians and Birds. They were once vividly painted and you can see traces of color on some. Now the good stuff. There was a strict no photography policy so these are scanned from a souvenir book.

Heavy Infantryman


Detail of a General


Detail of an Archer's Shoe Tread


Detail of one of many intricate hair styles


After touring the exhibit, we headed out into the rest of the museum. I'm not sure how I feel about the British Museum. Pat and I have had a discussion or two. I feel that they have stolen things around the world as part of their conquests and brought them home. Pat feels that they were protecting valuable cultural aspects in a way that the countries themselves could not. I agree, but why don't they give it back now? Many of those countries are more than capable of taking care of their own stuff now. Either way, it's a free museum with a whole lot of the world's stuff that just happens to be convenient for us to visit. So we did.

Ironically we've been to some of these places before, but had to come to the British Museum to see the real thing.

An extensive and impressive Egyptian collection


...including lots of mummies


The Rosetta Stone


Sculptures from the Athenian Parthenon pediment and frieze shown in a room the same size as the real building


The Assyrian Gates


Scary throwing knives from Africa


An inlaid Aztec double-headed serpent


A Samurai suit of armor


A statue from Easter Island


In the small "Americas" section, they even had a case with a display about the Hopewell Indians in Ohio featuring some artifacts and a picture of Serpent Mound.

Whew. Complete information overload and officially the longest time we have ever spent in a museum together. We ended the night with a photo-op next to a piece of modern history.

Platform 9 3/4 of Harry Potter fame at London King's Cross Train Station

Happy Birthday GRANDMA!!

Wishing you a Happy Birthday from Tower Bridge in London!

It sounds like you're going to have an exciting year with some changes ahead! We wish you the best of luck and hope that it all goes as smoothly as possible. We're looking forward to seeing you when we get back and hope that you have a wonderful birthday!

Bolsover Castle

This weekend we actually had some sun. In celebration, we went in search of another castle.

Bolsover is unique. It's not a real castle in the sense that it wasn't designed for defense even though the site had previously been occupied by a Norman defensive structure. The only part of the original defense that seem to remain is the curtain wall which is thought to be in the same place as the Norman version.

Bolsover is a 17th century fantasyland. Sir Charles Cavendish bought it in 1612 and created an elegant home based on the "...imaginary golden age of chivalry and pleasure"—now known as the Little Castle.


Inside, the rooms are richly decorated with wood paneling, stenciling, paintings, and elaborate fireplaces. Some of it has recently undergone restoration, but some of the original pieces remain in good condition.

The business room aka Star Chamber


The Serendipity closet

The paintings "...take the visitor on an allegorical journey from earthly concerns to heavenly (and erotic) delights." This includes paintings of the temperments of man, Hercules (to inspire the servants), Roman emperors and empresses, heaven, serendipity, etc.

Outside, the area inside the curtain wall was converted into the Venus Garden—the setting for masques and parties.


Cavendish Jr. soon inherited the castle and built two extensive wings outside the curtain wall to house larger party rooms and an elaborate horse complex. The new Terrace Range buildings housed a gallery (sort of like a mini version of the Hall of Mirrors), a great hall, a withdrawing room, a bedchamber, and a massive kitchen/servant area. On one occasion, they spent $2mill in one day entertaining the Queen and her entourage. The building is now just a shell, but still has impressive views over Scarsdale.






I am pretty sure the horse quarters next door were nicer than the servants' quarters. The huge stone building held a blacksmith, stables, and an indoor Riding House. William Cavendish was said to be the finest horseman in Europe and an expert swordsman. As such, his passion was training other people at his complex—note the elaborate second floor viewing area.