Today, I had my first day at work at ARM. My team mates are nice and I’ve got a lot to learn, but I think this role will be great. Rob hass started looking for a rental property for us in Cambridge and is preparing for his second Bosch interview on Thursday.

But now back a week and a half to York. We were *wowed* by York. Completely. Really, we quite loved it.

Taking in the Atmosphere

So, York is about an hour or more train ride above Nottingham. One of the unique aspects of the city is that its CBD is surrounded by Roman city walls wihch have been built upon since Roman times and are now maintained.

At end side of the walls is a gate, called a Lock which used to be the only entryways to the city.

A Lock to the South

The walls are in really great condition in some places. You can walk over most of the walls, going up and down through stairways at the gates and places.

Up on the Wall Disappearing Down!

The archiecture in York is *awesome*. There are so so many buildings from various ages, Tudor, Victorian etc. It meant that the CBD looked amazing. Below is am image of the infamous Shambles, where the buildings are all crooked and the first floors stick out over the ground floors. This was an old method of ‘cheating’ the building taxes, which charged you per ground floor square footage. Heh.

Shambles with their Cheating Buildings

The other reason to come to York is to see the York Minster (aka church).

The Minster is Over There!

The Minster has the largest medieval stained glass windows in Northern Europe. Unfortunately, the windows were being renovated, so we took some pictures of some of the other beautiful windows.

Look to the East!

Huge Medieval Windows

Pretty High Up There

They did have some sample panels from the windows being renovated on display at ground level. Each of the panels tells a story. The stories told in the renovated windows are the from Genesis and the Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. One of these panels was from the bottom row of panels and had been compressed and distorted because of the weight of all the panels above. Crazy. I guess that’s why they’re renovating the windows for the next couple of years.

Telling a Story with Glass The Author Signs It

They mighty not be gargoyles, but Rob couldn’t resist these little faces…

Little Watching Faces

But the highlight is definitely that wall. All the way around the CBD with no breaks. In these snaps, we took and picture and then Rob ran away for 10 secs.

York Wall 1

York Wall 2

York Wall 3

After 1 day, we were off to Edinburgh the next morning. But York is definitely getting a revisit. And a longer one at that.

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