We arrived at the York Minster just as one of their hourly tours was beginning. Our docent was pretty good, aside from a few "facts" that didn't seem quite right and his disparaging remarks about academics. The hour-long tour became ninety minutes, after which we toured the crypt and treasury, and the exhibition in the undercroft (foundations), where you could see portions of the original 11th-century church. We opted not to climb up into the tower, although it meant missing out on the "exhilarating" views.

The stained glass was impressive, estimated to be half of all the medieval stained glass in England. These photos don't do the windows justice.

See how everything doesn't line up.

And here, where it's wider on the right with four columns than on the left with three columns.

And for you Boy Scouts who learned semaphore, these headless saints are spelling out something with their halos instead of flags.*

     *Christ is here

I didn't get a great photo of the outside today because I thought we would be walking the wall and getting a good view. Hopefully I will tomorrow.

Here's part of a fresco from the original building.

We stopped for tea, then walked to the Castle Museum, which is in what were once two 18th-century prisons, a female prison and the debtors prison. The prisons were built on the site of York Castle--hence the name of the museum--that was built for William the Conqueror in 1068. The museum was interesting but it had a series of unrelated galleries, some better than others. It started with several period rooms, which were not displayed chronologically but were authentic (even including taxidermied dogs in two of them and two cats in another). They had a good exhibition on World War I to honor the centenary, 1914: When the World Changed Forever, replete with uniforms, gear, and a bunker.

The Sixties was also an interesting gallery. It talked about fashion, music, television, packaging, space travel, women's liberation, etc. Toy Stories was another that had toys from different generations, but they were all mixed together, so for anyone younger than 60 who wouldn't know about the toys of the 1950s and 1960s, you would have no idea what era most of them were from. For us old-timers, it was nostalgic.

I personally liked the exhibition Shaping the Body: 400 Years of Fashion, Food and Life, which had examples of mostly women's fashion from undergarments to dresses. They did a particularly nice job of talking about body image. The section on different ideas of beauty and adornment around the world (mehndi in India, scarification and tattooing in Australia and countries in Africa, etc.) got a little weird when they included Metrosexuals and Lumbersexuals in the exhibit. (Not to mention Miss Universe.)

They had an interesting series of videos comparing a day in the life of two people from different time periods interacting with each other. For example, there was a carriage driver of the 18th or 19th century describing his job of having to get people from York down to London talking to a current-day bus driver. But I had problems with the interaction with the "maid of all work" in the 19th century with the "homemaker" supposedly representing life today. This wall display said more-or-less the same thing as the actors in the video.

They did a nice job of recreating a Victorian Street. I had to look very closely at the horse to see that it wasn't another example of taxidermy.

And finally there was the prison exhibition down in the actual prison cells with well-done videos of actors recreating real prisoners, including the legendary Dick Turpin. There was a database of former prisoners where you could check your family name. We didn't try it because we either didn't want to know or, more accurately, we didn't want to wait our turn to try it.

One thing I especially like about British museums, and that I remember from being here with my daughters 20 years ago, is that they try very hard to engage younger children in the museum experience. Most of the museums have special handouts for children, sheets with lists of items to search for in each room, clothing to try on, etc.

We had talked about going back to the Minster for Evensong, but we didn't allow enough time. We also had planned to do the ghost walk but forgot until we were already sitting down at our hotel restaurant for dinner.

Favorite plaque of the day (although it was a window sticker, not a real plaque):