Arrival Date: 2012-04-08
Departure Date: 2012-04-12
Accommodation: Mercure Fairfield Manor Hotel, York
After breakfast and packing on Sunday morning, we left for York, arriving at our beautiful hotel around midday. A little too early to check in to our room, we left our luggage with the front desk and went off to explore.
First stop, naturally, was somewhere for lunch. On the way towards York city centre, we stopped off at a rustic country pub called The Dormouse which served a fantastic small Sunday lunch in a lovely cozy setting. Once full, we drove to the centre of York for a walk around.
We parked just outside the East wall and walked the rest of the way, first stop was The Shambles which was fairly busy, but as quaint as it can get.
We went to most of the shops in The Shambles, particularly the old fashioned sweet shops. After this, we kept going North towards York Minster, when we happened upon The Braithwaite Gallery, a small gallery owned by a local artist called Mark Braithwaite. His oil paintings were incredible, and both Helen and I would love to have a small set of his prints.
York Minster found itself just behind The Braithwaite Gallery, and despite having some scaffold out front for some repair work, was still a beautiful building.
Unfortunately, the Minster itself wasn’t open to the public, so we couldn’t explore the inside. We continued walking around the city for another couple of hours, visiting lots of other little galleries and independent shops (The Braithwaite Gallery remains our favourite though), then as everywhere started closing at 5ish, we started to make our way back to the car and the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, our room was ready for us and our bags had already been taken upstairs. The room was enormous, with a seperate lounge, two TV’s, multiple sitting areas and vanity tables, a massive bath (big enough for 3-4 people), and more! The only thing it didn’t come with was its own butler bell!
After a little TV, we went to find a local Frankie and Benny’s for some dinner, then back to the hotel to plan the next day and get an early night.
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