York

After taking a lot of time on Friday's night booking the tickets from Leeds to Sheffield and from Sheffield back to Manchester, I went to bed quite late and that made me tired the morning on the day after. I had a quick breakfast before rushing to Manchester Piccadilly Station to catch the train to York. The train was on time as ever, calling at Manchester Victoria and some stations on the way. It took two hours to call at York.

The York Station was an old style building and that was worth to stop and took some photos. I followed the direction on the notice board to the National Rail Museum, which has been boasted the biggest train museum in the world. In the great hall, there were a wide range of tains; from wooden steam locomotives to Shinkansen 0 seiries to Eurostar, from wooden carts to containers to queen's bogies. Then I walked up stair passed the train garage below to a hall consisted of train station's sign, badges, controller and etc. The frist track control equipments to the lastest ones were shown, real time train controlling board linking from the York Station could be seen.


After a long walk in the museum through all the halls, my body ran out of energy. An inexpensive coffee in the great hall had its chance to take away some of my money, changing with a cup of cappucino and a piece of fruit cake.

From the train museum, I headed to the city center of York, passed the river with a beautiful bank on each side. People were queueing to get into a bus, tourists holding their camera and took picutres of their family and friends. I checked the free map I had got two days before for York Minster. The big tall tower was very obvious and led me to the right direction. The cathedral had been building for almost two hundred years. 5 pounds to enter, errrrh!, I denied and went to the market near by.

Small streets in the market were packed with people everywhere, made me think of Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. A candy shop was on my right, the coffee shop was next just opposite the flower shop. International shop such as Levis, Gap, H&M and some more established themselves in between, not very contrast but weird to be there.


I called at Roman Bath, Merchant's Adventure House before arriving at Clifford Tower and York Museum. The latter two cost quite a lot to enter, so I decided to walk on the York Wall, the narrow long wall around the city. As time passed by, I went to York Art Galler, free to enter, enjoying the exhibition called "Time". I walked a bit around the city center, had a drink, sent a postcard to my family and went directly to York Station.


I took the train at about 8 pm, changed at Leeds to catch the other to Sheffield. Luckily all trains were on time, therefore my plan had never paused during this trip.