So, when we were in Chester, a friendly waitress strongly suggested that we should check out York if we had time. She said that a lot of Harry Potter had been filmed there because it was like Diagon Ally, but in real life. We had a couple of extra days to explore the area and the most obvious options were Liverpool or Manchester, but slightly further East were Leeds and then York. So, we figured we could drive an extra hour or so and check out York. We found Chester quite charming, so we figured that if the waitress, who group in Chester, thought York was even better, we might as well check it out. According to english people on Reddit, York is “what American’s think England looks like.” Sounds great…
So… we were there on Easter weekend which is a long weekend (I think Friday and Monday might be off for most people) and we arrived on Saturday. It was PACKED. Apparently everyone goes to York on a holiday weekend. The city was very cool and a bit reminiscent of Diagon Ally with narrow streets and shops everywhere.
The Minster in the middle of town is spectacular.
Here’s a quickie video we took from our patio to give a sense of what it looks like:
So, it was pretty cool, BUT… and this is a large BUT… as it got later, we realized that pretty much everyone on the streets was super drunk. And, the more we paid attention, the more we realized that it was absolutely full of bachelor and bachelorette parties (called stag and hen in the UK). It was crazy. Such a picturesque town, and SO, SO many drunk people literally vomiting on the streets. I did some googling and apparently this is a regular weekend night occurence in York, likely made worse by the holiday weekend. Oh well. During the day, it was great!
