York

In August I meet up with Clare, Matt El and the kids in York. Clare and I spent Friday night at a lovely B&B, catching up over a bottle of wine before the meet up with the others on Saturday morning. The weather was gorgeous so we wondered around York a bit, got some lunch and found the York Gardens to have a picnic.

York Cathedral

View for our picnic.

In the gardens, they had a couple of birds of prey on display which you could hold briefly for a few pounds. I held the giant European Owl and Livvy held the little Digger owl. I think she picked the right one. The European owl was quite heavy.

European owl (looking quite small here)

In the gardens, there is the York museum which had a dinosaur trail so we spent the rest of the afternoon in there.

Livvy practicing her spelling.

Getting the trail info

Something Roman

Matt playing dress-up

Little dragon attaching daddy dragon

Sword

Dino

We dared Matt.

Real dino bones

 After getting our luggage, we headed to the AirBnB on the outskirts of the city. We spent the rest of the night chilling and making the most swamping S'mores. 

Natural History Museum

I have spent the past few weeks sick and waiting for deliveries (happily they happened over the same weeks I guess) so haven't really done much. The last week has been super stressful and difficult so this weekend I decided to get out of the house. However despite doing nothing, it has been an expensive month. But soon my furniture will be delivered and I will have a complete liveable apartment. All very exciting. But expensive. However the Natural history museum is free.

Dinosaur!

Skull

Horns.

Fossil

Display of hundreds of humming birds.

Dodo!!!! (Bigger than I expected)

Giant sloth (seriously giant)

They had a insect and creepy crawly exhibit. I regretted it as soon as I got in there. I have lived with cockroaches close up - I do not need to see them again. I got out of there quickly as my skin was crawling.

Giant scorpion model

Dinosaur in the main hall

Inside of a tortoise.

Snake skeleton

Croc and her skeleton 

Sea fan

Sae basket (type of star fish)

 The main hall is the mammals, with giant models everywhere.

Rhino!

Wooly mammoth (surprisingly small skull/brain)

Narwhales can have 2 tusks!!!(1 in every 500). So cool

Hall, dominated by blue whale 

Hippos - scary!!!

 They have a great dinosaur museum but it was so crowded at this point, I just could not be bothered! I zipped around. (I'll have to go back another day and see it properly.)

T-rex

More dinos.

 I got a ticket for the "behind the scenes" tour. It was more expensive than I expected but very good. Though the woman didn't speak very good english so half my questions did not get answered - but I did get answers to other questions I didn't ask, even if it took some time to understand what those questions might have been.
I really recommend the tour. You get to see the specimen rooms. Unfortunately there was not a lot of time to take any photos but it was very interesting. And they have a 8.6m long giant squid. Very cool.

The squid.

Tentaces (and the claws)

Part of the specimen room 

After the tour, it was even busier (and people were still queueing to get in) so I hit the gift shop before calling it a day. I didn't mean to buy anything, but like I said it has been a rough week. So I thought maybe something nice to treat myself. But I went all kid. And got a stuff toy and a book of pictures of baby animals. 

Well I figure if the next weeks are going to be anything like this one - a god chance of that - these will help. And if a book of baby animal pictures can't, things are really tough. Happily so far they work! Can't help but smile! :)

Treats (big kid at heart!)