First of ESO: Trip to York

 Valentine's Day, and Sunday. You can't possibly start very early on a day like that, much less if the buses only get going at nine or ten. So we meet at 10.15, having to wait for a few not-so-early birds. First thing, we're going cat hunting. Not real cats, of course: that would be cruel. The point is, there once was an architect in York who 'signed' his buildings by putting life-sized cat statuettes somewhere on the facades. Some of them are sitting on windowsills, others are climbing drainpipes. Our job is to find as many of them as we possibly can by following directions and cryptic descriptions on a sheet of paper. It's not easy, but we do find quite a few of them. 

 Come lunchtime, we are both freezing and starving -rarely has a soft bun felt so good. Some of us find out that York Minster is a wonderful site for a bit of basic parcours. 

 The afternoon is planned to take us to York Castle Museum. On the way there, we come across a man juggling battleaxes on top of a two-metre-high monocycle and the first stalls of the Viking Festival. Joscha tries on a Viking helmet and mail coiff, and we do some weightlifting with a chainmail shirt. The Vikings did not go into battle lightly clad!

 At first, the kids are a bit less than enthusiastic about seeing a museum. This changes when we actually enter: the British think that visiting a museum should be fun, and that the impression of being there is more important than lots of information. The recreation of the Victorian Quarter is awesome. It's a whole town centre, complete with a number of workshops (the chandler's was almost as depressing as the real thing), shops and the police station with its authentic-looking holding cell.   In the toy exhibition we played Pong and saw a 150-year-old rocking horse. It was actually quite amazing. The buildings of the museum used to belong to one of Britain's largest prisons, and part of it is a prison museum. There was the gallows, there were prison cells and manacles, and it was actually a bit scary. The exhibition on the First World War, complete with trenches and tunnels one could creep through, was also very impressive and disquieting.

 After the visit to the museum, we had a spell of free time, and then it was off to supper and to bed. Weren't they both welcome!