York-The Original (Part 3)

We finished our walk on the city wall, then headed to the York Minster. After marveling at the restoration projects we could see from the outside, we forked up our entrance fees and headed in to see what there was to see.

This York Minster is the site were Constantine was first crowned Emperor. I'm sure a lot of other really important and cool things happened then too, but hey when you're royal and rich it's your story that gets told.

The intricate stained glass could only be appreciated from the inside, as the light has to shine through from the outside-in for the color to show. Almost all of the stained glass has been restored throughout the centuries at one point or another, but the original art and form has been kept and in many cases, much of the original material used for the restoration.

This is the breathtaking and neckbrecking view up the central tower. It is apparently 197 feet tall and weighs the equivalent of 14 jumbo jets, according to our sage Mr. Steves.

As a proper Church of England, the York Minster has a choir screen that boasts some incredibly old and intricate statues of England's Kings from William I (the conqueror) to Henry VI. 

The church was huge and impressive, and even kind of creepy. We loved it. It even had gift shop, where they had goods for sale in an effort to get even more money out of us.

We decided a picture was good enough. And after taking our time touring through the whole minster, we went outside to listen to the church bells announce the evensong. Then we went in, and along with all of the other non-Church of England-member tourists, attended their touristy evensong service. Believe me when I say touristy. It was elegant and nice and I'm sure it was mass in accordance to Anglican tradition, but they had tour guides helping us to our seats and a pamphlet explaining each part of the service. Then the choir started singing. It was an all men choir with boys ranging from barely able to see over the rail to  men needing to sit during parts of the service that normally called for standing.

I wish I could have recorded the singing or that I could think of words better than "wow" to describe the experience of listening to the choir perform. There was a pipe organ that we could feel through the wooden pew and the church was clearly built with vocal performance in mind. Art is a powerful thing. After the service we decided then and there to immediately start spending more money and time on seeing live music.

We finally tore ourselves away from York, got onto another train, and raced even further up north to Edinburgh. York pictures are in the Picasa albums dated 6/25 and 6/26. Be sure to check them out!