A theme of our family's life is going somewhere to visit women who had taken care of me or my children. Last week we went to York to see a woman who babysat me when I was about 9 and she was about to start college. In the intervening years she came here for work and settled in. These days there are only so many people who I could go thirty years without seeing and yet be up on all the major events of their lives because our moms are friendly, and I think we were both curious to compare the reports with reality. It was wonderful but also very disorienting to meet her as enough of a peer that my younger son asked how she could have been my babysitter when I'm the one with more gray hair. Love to see those critical thinking skills at work!

There was some track work between Manchester and York which required transfer to a shuttle for part of the trip. We were not quite aggressive enough in our crowd work to make it onto the waiting coach bus for which I felt a sense of personal failure. No worries, the windbreakered rail employee said, that double decker over there is ready for overflow. Is it really overflow if you know how many people are transferring from Wakefield to York, and that it's too many people for one bus, so maybe you could have just had them both ready? Never mind, the second bus is just over there, she'll get the driver.

The driver's been found but they've been talking for a while. The lady in the windbreaker is frowning at her clipboard. The bus makes a strangled sound. The battery is dead. There's another bus sitting there tantalizingly, but that's needed for all the people who will be getting off the next train which will be in by the time a new bus can be sent from either of the nearest depots (mini geography lesson!). There's another train to York leaving from the other train station in Wakefield, but sadly, Windbreaker Lady says, she's remembered this other train five minutes too late for any of us to make it there in time. She wishes she had remembered earlier! Everyone smiles resignedly at that. Eventually it gets to the point where the quickest way for any of us to get to York is to get on the bus due to take the people from the next train. There is some deliberation about whether we can get on early before that train arrives so there's no chance that any of us misses out on a seat and would be at the mercy of the replacement bus allegedly en route. It breaks our way so we settle in, and once the train arrives we leave, an hour late. The lesson is that it's always worth it to be pushy, or at least always make sure you're on the first bus. Plus side: we drove past a pub called the Hark to Mopsey. If you and your partner read that out loud in unison when you see it, then you know you're married to the right person.

When I studied abroad in Sussex I met a friend from York and we went to her parents' house over a break. I remember a train museum, the post-event bliss of her friend we bumped into who had just got back from Glastonbury, and I want to say we popped into the gallery of the court house and saw part of a trial for some kind of assault? Sadly, the branch of the Gap where I'd had to get replacements for forgotten pajamas is lost to the sands of time.

What is not lost to the sands of time is quite a bit of York's ancient infrastructure. York is very pretty in a way that reminded me of Salem. There was a dungeon "museum" that N tried to convince us to go, to just like he has tried to convince us to go to many witchy pseudo-educational things. The former babysitter (FB) suggested we go to the York Castle Museum, which confusingly is not the actual castle next door. My kids are getting to be extremely museumed out but this place was a WIN.

There were a lot of exhibits about homes and everyday objects from various bygone eras, which I always enjoy. There was a jail cell, a school room, and a recreation of a whole Victorian street where you can go into stores and buy candy that your mom might later say is a choking hazard. We spent most of our time in a room of old animatronic machines that had puppet monkeys playing the maracas or told fortunes like the one in "Big". If it had been up to my kids we would have spent the whole day and their college fund in there.

We were a week too early for Christmas markets, and like Salem I could imagine the crowds getting to be kind of a lot if you were there at a peak time. We didn't to to The Shambles, a neighborhood of very picturesque narrow streets that are now awash with Harry Potter stuff, but I did pass a bachelorette party where the bride was in full Fleur de la Coeur cosplay. There is still a ton to do in York and I'm sure we will be back to see FB so I can hear the soothing tones of home. Meanwhile, as I find continually baffling, tourists are sleeping on Manchester! Watch 24 Hour Party People and tell me you don't want to go see the place where a plaque on an apartment building by the canal commemorates the site of a former warehouse/club/temple of early nineties rave culture!