Good-bye, Manchester. We had a great time and hope to get back some day. But it was on to York by train, and we discovered that York is a great city, too.

The main reason I planned a trip to York was to see the York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. We decided to wait until tomorrow to visit the cathedral, when hopefully it won't be as crowded. The city was full of tourists--in fact it is the first city this trip that we've heard an American accent, although only once. More often I would hear what I thought was a foreign language only to discover, upon listening more carefully, that they were speaking English. The accent is much heavier up here.

We wandered the old city. The streets are very charming, especially the famous Shambles as well as Stonegate.

And this must be their take on TJMaxx.

We had tea at Betty's Cafe Tea Rooms, an institution since 1919.

In the basement there is a mirror with the signatures of hundreds of Allied airmen who used Betty's as an unofficial mess during World War II.

After getting our bearings and working out our plan for tomorrow, we checked into our hotel. Gord called his sister and tried talking to his mom. Then I did the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle with my sister. We finished in 36 minutes today--and that's in spite of being out of practice (with the 6-hour time difference we haven't been able to do our nightly puzzle). I love the technology that enables us to simultaneously fill in the same puzzle while she is in Minneapolis and I am here.

We then went to dinner, after which we intended to do a ghost tour of York. It had good reviews, so much so that there were probably over thirty people in the group. We decided to wait until tomorrow, hoping there would be less people, and instead opted to go to the Three Legged Mare pub instead. We sat outside in the back area and the resident cat jumped into Gord's lap.

After it started raining a bit we went inside where we were again visited by the cat (until the bartender kicked him out) and where Gord befriended a couple with whom we eventually sat. She is a dental therapist and he is a writer/journalist. It turns out he has written a book about rock music (black metal) and Satanism. (When we returned to our hotel room, I did my usual Google stalking and found out he graduated from the University of Cambridge, writes on the occult, rock music, and trash culture, and he is an ordained reverend in the Church of Satan--and he seemed like such a nice guy!) His father is a psychologist who teaches at the University of York and is known for his work on working memory.

We walked back to our room and I called my other sister.

Decision of the day: We keep getting asked where we're from. Maybe it's because as I said before I haven't run across many other Americans (at least outside of London). It's a valid question, but as soon as we say the US we get asked the inevitable question of how we feel about Donald Trump. We decided that from now on we should bypass the whole United States thing and tell people we are from Canada, which is actually the truth. I get the distinct impression that people outside the US are even more baffled about his success than most Americans, if that is even possible. I certainly haven't heard anyone speak favorably about him here.

Joke of the day: