Road Tripping in England Part 1: Leicester

So my dad for his work has to travel around a bit. And last week he had meetings in York and in Leicester. Naturally, we decided to tag along and see more of the country. So we spent a night in Leicester and then the next day toured around a bit (Did you know that's where King Richard III was buried? I didn't either. But now we do!).  Dad was going to have a meeting in Leeds as well, but he got sick and had to cancel the meeting so we went straight to York after. We didn't get to go into any Castles or Cathedrals in York because we didn't get there until after 5 pm, and as you know everything in England closes after 5/6 pm. But we did stop for Fish and Chips at a lovely seafood restaurant and got quite a few photos of York Minster (the big cathedral) and quite a few photos of these adorable buildings we saw in the city. On our way back home to Norwich, we drove through the Peak district, around through Manchester, even stopping in Preston to see the Temple there! And I have to say, I think I may have found a new favourite temple. But I'll let you see for yourself. Though In order to do each city justice and each place we visited justice, I'll have to just have to split up the photos. So here's what we saw in Leicester.

These first few Photos are from the first night we were in Leicester just wandering around, trying to find some place to have dinner. The rest of the pictures are from the next morning. 

We first went to the Guildhall, which had been used as a city hall in Leicester up until the 1800's. and most of the artifacts in the free museum that's now there dated pre 1500's, which is older than most of the things we see in the US. Of course the building itself was renovated in the early 1900's, and unfortunately we don't know how much of the building itself is original wood etc. because it didn't say anywhere and the tour of the museum wasn't guided. Which is a shame. I would have loved to know what was original. Anyway, free tour of the guildhall included the Mayor's Room with the Mayor Chair (I'm not 100% sure that's what they're really called), the Library and the Scribe's rooms up above the Guildhall proper, and the dungeons down below. So there you go. That's the tour of the Guildhall. 

The next place we went was the Leicester Cathedral, which is where the body of King Richard III now rests. His body was found buried beneath a Car Park just across the street from the Cathedral, and was moved to the Cathedral in 2012. Here's the whole story, and if you're like "Who is Richard III and why should I care?", then you can show yourself out.

There's quite a bit of lovely stained glass, including two new windows that were put into place in 2016 that include paintings of the life of Richard III and various bits about the town itself. Those are the red/orange ones. I love a good stained glass window. (If you want to see THE coolest stained glass window in the world, check this out)

So that's Leicester for you. Loved it. The Holiday Inn we stayed in was probably the best I've ever stayed at. Lovely part of the country.