24 HOURS IN YORK - DAY 1 #MERCURECITYSWAPPERS

I love York; it’s one of my favourite cities. It’s a place I’ve been visiting since I lived in Leeds and until last year I got to up there quite regularly with work.  The history, winding streets and good old Yorkshire people make York a truly lovely place to spend some time and I’m always looking for an excuse to go back. Towards the end of last year I took part in Mercure Blogger swap #MercureCitySwappers where I’d swap cities with a blogger, I’d visit their hometown and they’d visit mine, Nottingham. As part of the deal you’re given a couple of things to do whilst you’re there as recommended by the blogger. You also get to stay over in a Mercure hotel, ours was the Mercure York Fairfield Manor Hotel (check out their latest deals). Dinner and breakfast were also included during our stay. So, it was the day before New Year’s Eve, we packed up the car and headed up north to the beautiful York... 

We decided to spend the day doing our recommendations; the hotel itself was about 15 minutes out of the city centre so to make it easier we just headed straight to town and by this point it was late morning and we were starving! Luckily, one of our recommendations was Bettys Tea room...

I love Bettys so I was super pleased to see this on the list. If you know Bettys, or have been before you know there’s a very high chance you’ll have to queue to get in, we waited around 40 minutes which wasn’t so bad, it was quite a mild day. Although they had a wide range of meals to pick from, from something light to heavier meals, we decided to indulge and go for the afternoon tea with a side of hot chocolate for James and extra slice of gooey chocolate cake for me. Tabitha our waitress was really lovely!

After Bettys we decided to try and walk off the sugar and had a wander around the cobbled streets. I really like this part of York for its independent shops and character of the buildings, you could spend hours walking around here and window shopping!

After a while, we headed over to the next recommendation York Minster. In all my years of visiting York, I’ve never actually been to the Minster so was looking forward to finally visiting. We actually got here late afternoon so unfortunately we couldn’t go up the tower, however our tickets let us come back and do that at another date which is good! We spent quite a while walking around the Minster and taking in all the history, I’m not religious at all but I can certainly appreciate good architecture. We even caught a choir practice which was beautiful to listen to!

By the time we’d finished at the Minster it was now early evening so we thought we better head to our hotel, directions were easy to follow out of the city centre and a few miles later we pulled up to MercureYork Fairfield Manor Hotel. 

To be continued...