Last weekend Sarah and I enjoyed a weekend in York. It had meant to coincide with our first anniversary since getting engaged, but with all the other things going on we had put it back to early December.

We stayed at the Jorvik Hotel which is situated opposite St Olafs and across from the entrance to the Museum Gardens.

Having enjoyed an evening meal at Las Iguanas, the following morning we headed over to our favourite cafe – Your Bike Shed. They do a great vegetarian (and gluten-free) breakfast here.

After breakfast, we headed over to the National Railway Museum. We have already put up a review blog post, which you can read here.

Afterwards, we headed back into town and took a walk around the Christmas Market.

Later, we enjoyed an evening meal at Pizza Express.

Before finishing the day off at the local Minster Inn.

We awoke the following morning to a minus degree temperature as we headed over to York Parkrun.

Sarah had not been feeling too good all weekend, so wasn’t well enough to run.

It was left to myself and three hundred and forty others to run around the icy track.

We had then hoped to visit the Minster, but it wasn’t open to the public due to holding an afternoon event. It has given us an excuse (if we needed one) to visit York again soon.

Instead, we went to York’s Chocolate Story. This proved to be a really interesting guided tour. York, of course, amongst other things, is famous for being a home of British chocolate production … and Sarah likes chocolate!

The tour told us the stories behind some of the best-known names in chocolate, told us how chocolate is made and even gave us the opportunity for us to be a chocolatier ourselves.

Later we took another tour, this one somewhat different to the first. We visited York Brewery.

This was an informative and enjoyable tour of the premises  with an explanation of the whole brewing process, from grain to glass! It also included some samples to taste. Great!

In the evening we returned to the place where we got engaged for another great meal – Kapadokya 50.

The following morning, Sarah was still struggling. Therefore, after breakfast, we headed for home. On the way, however, we stopped for a brief visit of The Goddards, a National Trust property that was the home of one the famous chocolatier families, The Terry’s.

In telling their story, the home had been made over with a Christmas time theme.

We briefly stepped into the gardens. In truth, they are probably much better walking around in summer.

Nonetheless, this is a great little place and worthy of a visit if staying in York

Finally, for us, it was time to head back to Stockport. In spite Sarah feeling under the weather we had still both enjoyed a great time in York.