It was just our luck that this year Mr H's birthday landed on a Saturday, (in case you missed it, we don't go anywhere on weekends haha) so we booked to go to York for Monday the 24th February. York is somewhere I have visited many times during my life and although Mr H grew up a lot closer to there than I did, he'd never been into the city itself. We were actually booked to go last October but decided to cancel so it was exciting to finally be going to York together.
Monday morning, we left home pretty early, drove down and stopped for breakfast at an independent garden centre outside the centre. Afterwards, we headed into town, parked up and had a wander around town heading towards Coppergate for our 12pm booking at Jorvik. We were super early, so decided to just have a seat for a while, waiting for our slot.
This might seem like a lot of photos, but for me, I really didn't take many. As I was using my walking stick, I'd decided to leave my camera in the car and just use my phone, meaning the quality isn't great, and I'm a little disappointed I forgot to even take a photo of the sign outside!
Jorvik Viking Centre is an immersive experience, comprised of a fully reconstructed Viking village and a small adjoining museum based on York's Viking past stemming from a 1976 archaeological excavation (in the area Jorvik is based) that uncovered York’s hidden Viking heritage. I visited Jorvik as a child and obviously it has evolved a lot in the past 25 years! We had a great time and their accessibility is pretty good considering the attraction is based underground. Unfortunately, it is a little more complex for full-time wheelchair users, but they do still accommodate - have a peek at their access page of the website here >
Access | JORVIK Viking Centre
Once we spent some pennies in the gift shop, we headed to our accommodation for the night to check in. I'm going to share a separate post all about that so I'll move on to our night out on the town! Or whatever a 34-year-old anti-social couple does...
This whole trip was very slow and relaxed, just taking things as they come with just a rough idea of where we'd like to go, so after a ramble up the shambles and a saunter past the cathedral, we ended up in the Three-Legged Mare for our first drink of the night. It was very quiet but a lovely atmosphere and friendly bartender so perfect for us. We could have really stayed but had two stops we wanted to try so we headed off down to Evil Eye for a cocktail, then to Valhalla for a bite to eat. Valhalla was somewhere we were really looking forward to visiting and although it was great, we were hit with a slight disappointment when we had to vacate our table to make way for a quiz night. As there was no other seating we headed back up to the Three-Legged Mare.
On the way we managed to catch a showing of the Colour and Light Wildlife Projections on the Cathedral! I so wish I'd had my camera with me to get some good photos but it was nice to experience it either way.
Moving on to the pub for one last drink, we also enjoyed their open acoustic night before turning in, back at the inn!
Day two and more info about where we stayed coming soon.
