Friday 3 June 2005
Today it's back to London.
After breakfast we loaded up the car and set off south from York. I realised I never explained the reason why York's streets are called Gates and the gates are called Bars and seeing as not much happened today apart from travelling on the M1 and M4 I will include the reason:
The city of York was settled first by the Romans in the 2nd century. By the 5th century the Roman Empire was shrinking so they abandoned Britain. Then came the Vikings who settled and called the city Jovirk (hence the modern name York). The Viking name for Street is 'Gait' so all the streets are called something Gate. (E.g. Mickelgate, Ousegate, etc.) The Viking name for gate is Bar, so all the entrances through the walls are called Bars.
There you have it - any errors in the above are my fault cause I should have listened more carefully.
After we got to London we negoitated the traffic and then I dropped Chaucey off at the hotel before taking the rental car back to the rental car company. If you ever come to Britain and want a rental car I recommend checking out 1Car1 who gave us the lowest price of any I checked and we got a new car with only 6000 miles on the clock, unlike most of the other budget operators who seemed to have slightly older vehicles.
For dinner we went to a Chinese Vegetarian restaurant - not a single meat dish but lots of fake meat dishes. (Sweet and Sour veg-pork, anyone?) Very nice and cheap, it's on Euston Road about 100 metres east of Regent Park Tube station.
After dinner I tried to pay the London Congestion charge - the hotel directed me to a self service machine that cancelled the transaction every time we thought we had completed it. We then had to ring up and they took the details over the phone and emailed the receipt. (Yes, I have got it!) All this for going 400 yards into the zone on a back street with no traffic.
That's it for today. Only three more days in London then it's off to Prague.
After breakfast we loaded up the car and set off south from York. I realised I never explained the reason why York's streets are called Gates and the gates are called Bars and seeing as not much happened today apart from travelling on the M1 and M4 I will include the reason:
The city of York was settled first by the Romans in the 2nd century. By the 5th century the Roman Empire was shrinking so they abandoned Britain. Then came the Vikings who settled and called the city Jovirk (hence the modern name York). The Viking name for Street is 'Gait' so all the streets are called something Gate. (E.g. Mickelgate, Ousegate, etc.) The Viking name for gate is Bar, so all the entrances through the walls are called Bars.
There you have it - any errors in the above are my fault cause I should have listened more carefully.
After we got to London we negoitated the traffic and then I dropped Chaucey off at the hotel before taking the rental car back to the rental car company. If you ever come to Britain and want a rental car I recommend checking out 1Car1 who gave us the lowest price of any I checked and we got a new car with only 6000 miles on the clock, unlike most of the other budget operators who seemed to have slightly older vehicles.
For dinner we went to a Chinese Vegetarian restaurant - not a single meat dish but lots of fake meat dishes. (Sweet and Sour veg-pork, anyone?) Very nice and cheap, it's on Euston Road about 100 metres east of Regent Park Tube station.
After dinner I tried to pay the London Congestion charge - the hotel directed me to a self service machine that cancelled the transaction every time we thought we had completed it. We then had to ring up and they took the details over the phone and emailed the receipt. (Yes, I have got it!) All this for going 400 yards into the zone on a back street with no traffic.
That's it for today. Only three more days in London then it's off to Prague.
posted by Michael at
7:59 PM
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