Approaching Chatsworth House from the car park

The morning and afternoon were both gorgeous weather with clear blue skies and shirt-sleeve temps. We had pre-booked for a 1030A entry at Chatsworth and following car parking and walking up we got in the gate around 1040A. Turns out that pre-booking simply means you stand in the same queue as everyone else – all that changes is that your encounter with the cashier to receive your tickets is streamlined. So we didn’t get into the house until right around 11A.

Waiting to enter Chatsworth.  We had timed entry tickets for 1030A, but despite arriving in time we still had to wait until about 1050A before we actually got into the house.

Chatsworth is definitely opulent. It is one of those houses with hundreds and hundreds of paintings, ceilings decorated with painted Greeks and/or nymphs and/or biblical scenes, along with large chambers designed to flaunt the wealth of the owner. There’s a tightly controlled pathway you traverse through the house across three levels of the building. Of what we saw, only one of the rooms passed the “I’d be willing to spend time in THAT room” test, and that was a room that one of the more recent owners – not sure who, but could have been someone in the last 200 years – converted into a library. Warm oak carvings and shelving, deep leather furniture – just looked like a great way to hole up for the day. Some of the notes in the guidebook mention that the owner’s book collection is considered one of the finest in the UK.

Various scenes from Chatsworth House

The wooden door and violin are both examples of trump l'oeil art - they are both flat 2D art skillfully painted to look 3D.

A couple of views of The Emperor Fountain as seen from inside Chatsworth House

We actually finished the house portion of the tour by around noon, and we just didn’t have the energy or inclination to tour the gardens, so we ended up buying a simple ham sandwich (carefully advertised as Just a Ham Sandwich – white bread and ham with nothing else), some chips (“crisps”) and a banana, then loaded ourselves back into the car for our drive up to York, which we expected to talk about an hour and 45 minutes, sharing the sandwich as just a way to tide ourselves over.

The original plan for an afternoon arrival in York was to try to drop our stuff at our hotel at our expected arrival time of 3P and then immediately make the 10 minute walk over to the York Castle Museum and try to get as much time in before they closed at 5P. From there the idea was to walk over to The Shambles and get a little medieval flavor before ending up at The Corner Grill House for dinner. I was extremely worried that we’d be rushing through the Museum, however. About a month before the trip I noticed that Clifford’s Tower would still be open until 6P, and I figured we could potentially add this as a 5P-6P activity (since the last entry was a 530P) if we needed a bit more “meat” – I thought that the promised vistas from the top of the tower might be interesting around 530P. Notably, searching online suggested one could “do” Clifford’s Tower in just 20-30 minutes.

However, getting to the museum by 3P seemed very unlikely, because it basically assumed we’d be able to check into the hotel in about 10 minutes and immediately walk over. I figured we’d lose AT LEAST 30 minutes to check-in, so at the last minute, I panicked and decided that it would be better to forgo the one hour tour of the gardens at Chatsworth House in the morning in order to arrive 1 hour earlier in York – which would put us at the hotel by around 2P and would pretty much guarantee we’d make it to the York Castle Museum by no later than 3P, thus relieving the pressure to potentially rush through it. I felt like this was a much better approach.

We pulled into York right around 1:45P and made our way to the hotel (called York Park City Inn when I first started researching it but fully renamed to Radisson York by the time we got there). I chose them as they were listed as one of the few hotels in central York offering guest parking, and indeed they had an attached garage. At 2P we were too early to check in, so we stored our with them and walked over to the York Castle Museum, just a few minutes away.

Clifford's Tower on our way to the York Castle Museum

A marker at the base of the mound atop of which Clifford's Tower sits

The YCM is housed in an old women’s prison and had a somewhat eclectic set of exhibits. Some were about life in York – specifically, some sample sitting room recreations; the impacts of WW1; and a large simulated city street of Victoria shop windows. Other exhibits included the 1960s, fashion and body shaping, the prison itself, and period toys. Overall, things just seemed a bit unfocused. Even given how tired we were there wasn’t anything that really hooked us. However, it did succeed in killing 90 minutes, after which we returned to the hotel and got ourselves checked in.

The mound upon which Clifford's Tower sits rises up on the the right hand side as we look toward the dramatic Magistrates Court building.  This is from our walk back to the hotel after having toured the York Castle Museum.

The Radisson York is a modern hotel, so actual A/C, a real king bed, and so on. I had booked “Minster View” and we found ourselves on the top (9th) floor with a wonderful vista over the River Ouise, just outside the hotel, to the Minster – can’t claim that we didn’t get our money’s worth here. I had opened the window to get some fresh air in (while we turned on the A/C and almost froze ourselves to death – it was REALLY efficient) and we could hear the minster’s bells on the both the hour and half hour. At 5P there was a really long bell song following the chimes of 5P.

I'd booked us a "Minster View" room at the hotel, and they delivered in spades!

Another view from our room.  The Radisson was directly alongside the River Ouise, which our room overlooked..

There was a moderate amount of traffic along the River Ouise, most of it tourist-related in nature.  Most of what we saw were larger than this small guy - although we did also see a few skullers, too.

For dinner I had selected Corner Grill House, which met our location criteria (only a short 0.2 mile walk from the hotel, just across the river bridge from us) and was also a steakhouse, meaning we’d get a chance to try some famed UK beef. We did our best imitation of “dressing up”, meaning I wore my black jeans instead of my blue jeans.

Dinner was nice. I had one of their 60-day “salt aged” rib eyes while E had their sirloin. I THINK my steak corresponded to a US rib eye, and I THINK hers corresponded to a NY Strip, but not 100% certain. We were both feeling a bit more recharged, so we both had a glass of Merlot. Mine was a French wine (CGH) while hers was Chilean – which I’d avoided due to its description mentioning that it was “plumy”. Good choice on my part – I enjoyed my wine much more. While E did enjoy hers, we agreed that mine was the better of the two. We finished up with a shared Sticky Toffee Pudding dessert and then made our way back to the hotel. We were both able to get a good night’s rest in, sleeping from 10P to about 7A(!), so started Day 5 feeling pretty normal