Sunday, June 10, 2012

Super Epic Cathedral Trip day 3 part 1

Day 3 Start: in York around 9ish, expected to visit: York, Grimsby, Lincoln, Norwich. Night in Norwich or Ely.

After York everything looks small. Not only is the building huge but the vertical lines are emphasized unlike in Durham where the horizontal lines seem to prevail. Then again it is something that is not really seen on the pictures one has to be there to see/feel it.

Durham

York
York I found to be one of the marvellous places about which I could write sonnets but instead of wasting time on making very bad verses I ll just upload a lot of pictures. York is one of the places that is best seen rather than described. 



One of the popular accusations of York is that it is charmless, sterile which in a way is understandable. I myself found Durham to be less impressing yet quirky and charming. York possibly because of its intimidating size is viewed as 'soulless'. I really mean intimidating because as soon as I stepped in I felt the insignificance of myself and my life. York Minster is a place that makes one realize that they are not even a pawn but merely dust on the chess board of life. Yet like all the huge and gorgeous things that look superficial as soon as you look closer they become less intimidating and livelier. I found the amount of beautiful, monstrous, and humorous details staggering in York.

Starting with its ceilings





And the stone carvings especially in the chapter house. 


This lovely three faced monster.
Birds fighting over a worm.

if you look closely you will see a cat chasing a mouse

 

It should be noticed that the decoration on the exterior are just as lavish as on the interior.


Especially the lovely gargoyles




Interestingly one of my favorite details was from our technologically developed era

York Minster is amazing. A mammoth of a building with a mammoth history behind it and a must for every bucket list of places to visit. York itself is lovely filled with medieval building such as this one.
The city is also surprisingly low in its height. My guess is that there was a law against building buildings higher than the cathedral.


From York we were planning to go to Grimsby to visit its church however time did not allow this, besides the interest in Grimsby was based on a legend about two imps. As the story went two Imps came to Lincoln and started causing mischief one of them was turned to stone by an angel that appeared the second one ran away to Grimsby. We never saw Grimsby but we did see the Imp turned to stone in Lincoln cathedral.

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