one sunny wednesday in york

To celebrate the end of quilting magazine, work treated us to a trip to York, home, amongst other things, to the Quilt Museum and Gallery, whom we'd been working with fairly closely throughout the last three years.

I was pretty young the last time I work to York and it was all about the castle and the Yorvik Centre, so it was great to see a different side of the city. The old part is incredibly pretty - narrow winding streets, comprised of seriously cool and historical looking buildings. This city certainly has excellent architecture. It's even difficult to distinguish the chain shops from the independents as nearly all the shop fronts have been left unaltered.

We walked along the city wall from the station to the Quilt Museum - so much of it has been preserved. The museum itself was v.teeny but their collection is ace, some of the pieces dating back to the 1700s! Despite the age of the quilts, the majority are in incredibly good condition. We weren't allowed to take pictures but here's what it looks like inside, pretty huh?

After the museum we went off in search of lunch and after wondering around for a bit, we settled on the Lamb and Lion Inn near High Petergate, mostly because of its gorgeous garden terrace right beside the old city walls.

After several glasses of wine and the tastiest (and most gigantic) steak and ale pie I've had in ages  (which I sadly could not finish no matter how much I wanted to), we made our way to the river to see the Clifford Tower (which was what my pie was based on - the likeness is pretty good I thought).

After a roam around the shambles and the v.pretty centre, it was time to head back to the station and catch our train to London. The train was surprisingly quick considering the distance (and a fairly good price when booked in advance) but next time I think I'd like to spend longer than a day in York, I feel there was a hell of lot we didn't get to explore.