The Shambles, York Castle Museum, Merchant Adventurers' Hall, & York City Walls

I woke up early because I wanted to get to the Shambles in order to take photos without people. I didn't get there early enough haha.

The Shambles is a historic street in York, featuring preserved medieval buildings, some dating back as far as the 14th century. It's a really cute street. Very Harry Pottery.

There was a bride and groom getting photos taken and people already in line to get into a store at 7:30 am. I think the store was some sort of witchcraft thing and I'm pretty sure it didn't open until 10:00 am, so it must've been extra special! See the bride and groom in the photo above?

I guess I was kind of hoping to be able to set up my tripod and get a photo of myself in the Shambles and I definitely could've asked someone to take a photo of me, but I wasn't in the mood for it.

After milling around for a bit hoping that people would scram, I decided to get breakfast at Spring Espresso. It was really cute in there and quiet; a great spot for me. I got an egg and bacon muffin (the English type of muffin) and a latte.

I read at the café for quite a while, waiting for the York Castle Museum to open. I enjoyed the museum a lot, but only took the few photos below. I was in there for about an hour and a half.

I snapped the army uniform photo because several years ago I took a history class where I did a research paper on the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps.

These grassy letters were outside the museum!

Next, I headed to the Merchant Adventurers' Hall. According to the website, "A Merchant Adventurer was someone who risked or 'adventured' his or her own money in overseas trade bringing back goods and wealth to York." The hall served, and still serves, as a place where business and charity are conducted. Construction was started on the hall in 1357 and was completed four years later.

This place offered an audio guide, which I appreciate. If there's ever an audio guide, I am paying for it. You learn so much more! Do I remember anything that I learned? Not really! But I sure did learn things in the moment.

This is the first floor of Merchant Adventurers' Hall.

I love a wood timbered ceiling. Surprisingly, this building has never suffered a fire!

Very impressive Great Hall. Look at how small I am in this room!
I wish all the stacking chairs weren't in the photo, though!

I was here for probably about an hour and was really the only person touring, so that was nice. I was able to set up my tripod for the photo above.

Next on my list was finding dessert items for later, so I made the rounds to some bakeries and a chocolate store. I got some chocolates at Monk Bar Chocolatiers, a chocolate cupcake at Crumbs, and a blueberry lavender cake slice from Wheldrake's. (Can you tell I am a dessert person?) Monk Bar is in the Shambles, so I made one more turn-about in that area. You can see how much busier it is during the day in the video below. I would have to say the chocolates from Monk Bar were my favorite.

I went back to my room at this point just to relax for a while since I had been walking for quite a few hours. It had also started raining so I needed shelter.

I headed back out a bit later to get some dinner and went to Love Cheese, which I believe is mostly a wine and cheese store, but they do serve food. They call it a "speakcheesey." Super cute.

It was still pretty early at this point, so I decided to see a movie. There weren't many playing, but Asteroid City didn't look too bad (it's got Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson -- how bad can it be?), so I went to that. It was weird. Like, pretty weird. I wouldn't recommend.

After this, I decided to walk more on the city walls. Beautiful views in this direction.

The York city walls were mostly built during Norman rule, the 11th century. They are old.

Some parts of the walls have iron gates, but others do not. This looks fairly safe, like you're going to just fall into soft grass that's a few feet below, but this part is actually a huge slope down where you would definitely hurt yourself if you fell. Felt kinda queasy on these parts, and particularly uncomfortable when passing by someone else!

A good day getting to explore York!