Harrogate and York

For our last day in Yorkshire we decided to finally do some shopping for gifts for the boys and for their excellent babysitters. We headed in to Harrogate and found a great little candy and toffee shop and loaded up with some goods. Then we headed to Betty's Tea House for lunch. 

We didn't end up committing to the full English Tea, but we had some truly amazing pastries and a ham and cheddar croissant, and what we mormons substitute for the usual coffee and tea fix... some amazing hot cocoa. I mean- Wow.

From Harrogate we headed to York with a plan to see the city and attend Evensong. There are many places that I wish we had spent more time and York was definetely top on that list. It was such a great little town and we only enjoyed it for a few hours. It was so beautiful and unique, even just in walking the streets.

This house stood at the entrance to one of York's most famous streets- The Shambles. 

The Shambles is an amazing little street that is so narrow that the buildings almost touch on the second floor. There were so many unique shops along it taking the place of what was once butcher shops. It reminded me so much of what Diagon Alley would be like.

One funny thing that happen was when Lauritz and little Will (age 3) came with us, Will had been struggling with a cough and his asthma symptoms so every time he would get running or excited he would start coughing it a super loud and painful sounding cough. I was holding his hand and walking down the narrow street and he would start coughing and people would stare at him like they couldn't believe the sound was coming from him. I felt like I was walking around in a Dicken's novel with Tiny Tim. Caleb even tried to get him to recite a few "Christmas Carol" lines.

Turns out that "busking" means pan handling and loitering.

Our main stop in York was York Minister. The architecture was so unique. There were so many stone carvings all over the building and all over the stone benches and gates around the area.

We were finally able to go to Evensong, which is an evening choir service that is unique to the Church of England. The music is preformed by a boys choir, mostly of younger boys and a few priests who lead the music and sometimes have solos. There was also some short scriptural reading. It was a great experience to be part of this worship service. It was a great way to end our last day in England.

After the service we were able to wander and look at the magnificent windows from the inside.

There was a lot of stone repair work going on outside and we were even able to watch some expert stone masons at work carving by hand, each of the stones to be replaced. It was fascinating to see, and it was quite obvious when you looked closely where repairs had been made.

There were so many fascinating and somewhat disturbing carving all over the building, though mostly high enough to make the details hard to see. Many of them had the appearance of being demons of some kind, but we didn't find anything to explain them. At first, we thought they might just be stones that had been damaged by time, like this one appears to be.

However, some of them were obviously exactly as they had been intended. And others most certainly could not be attributed to damage. They were found all over the building. It was very strange, but also a bit fascinating.

Then a few less creepy carvings that continued to fascinate.