simihilarities

York has always been rated fairly highly against my could-live-there index and was on my list of potential places to apply for university in, possibly having been visited for its open day on the way back from the visit I made to Edinburgh (unless it was on the way back from Newcastle, or unless Newcastle was visited on the way back from Edinburgh). Even back then it was reasonably familiar from a few visits on fambly-trips and several pops thereto whilst my dad was working just outside of Easingwold, a few miles to the north-west and a few miles to the south-east of where we've been staying since Monday afternoon. It's nice and small and pedestrian-friendly, has lots of nice old stone things and lots of nice newer-but-still-quite-old things and lots of cobbles. I was less impressed with Jorvik museum on a repeat visit as an adult than I had been as a child but more impressed with the train museum and the hat shop than I was as a relatively penniless and not-hat-needing youngster who had not yet been exposed to GCSE and A-level Physics. It was in York that I finally found a proper weighted skipping-rope when Lincoln had been unable to supply one after being introduced to such devices at school, in York that I was bought my first SLR from Jessop for my [mumblesomething]teenth birthday, in York that I found a 12" copy of the right version of the Stereo MC's lost in music, in York that I found two replacement large mugs and from York that I once cycled home after being dropped off just outside the ring road by my dad one half-term which I'm now astounded at having been allowed by my mum to have done.

It's still quite a nice place though I'm quite certain that Edinburgh was the correct choice, though through eyes with experience of more other-cities than merely Lincoln and Northampton York now looks a lot more Cambridgey about the relative-cycle-usage-indicators and quite Bruggesque around some of the walls. It even out-cobbles Edinburgh on some of the old bits and has a few roads which piss quite badly on pedestrians and cyclists, though on such a small scale that I was wishing I'd taken my bike on this holiday to have been able to pop for a trundle around it (and the pleasant surroundings).