After leaving the horse trials, we headed to nearby York for lunch and to find our hotel.  We stopped in a little pub, hoping for a fantastic rustic meal … the best meal we had on our Christmas trip was in a  little pub near Avebury.  Anyway, we went in and sat down in a small room that contained three young children with no adults in sight.   Adam went off to find the barkeep to see if they were serving food.

The little girl, who was probably around 7 years old, gave us a dirty look and said, “What are you doing here?!”  (You have to imagine their English accents, which Isabella pointed out made it ten times funnier.)  Her little brother said to her, “You’re not supposed to say that to people.  It’s rude.  You’re being rude.”

“No, you’re being rude!” she hollered at him.

“No, you’re being rude!” he hollered back.

“What you are, is poopy!  You’re poopy!” (pooh-pay!)

“I’m not poopy, you’re poopy!”

Then the girl pointed straight at Josie (sweet little silent Josie, who hadn’t uttered a single word since we sat down) and screeched, “No, YOU’RE POOPY! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S POOPY!”

Just then Adam came back into the room and said, “They’re only serving what’s left of the buffet.  You want to go somewhere else?”

The rest of us were getting up to leave before he even finished speaking.  “Gladly.”

We walked a little further and found a really neat old area of York, full of restaurants and shops.  We found a very nice little tea shop and had lunch there instead.

Shopping street in York.

One of the most interesting shops was this bookstore:

Josie, never missing the word “farts”.

Bookstore with very interesting titles on display.

The title “Farts: A Spotters Guide” caught Josie’s eye, so we had to stop and inspect the window.  Some of the other titles are, “Is Your Cat Gay?”, “Dawn of the Bunny Suicides”, “Crafting with Cat Hair”, “Stuck Up: 100 Objects Inserted and Ingested in Places They Shouldn’t Be”, “Crap Lyrics: A Celebration of the Very Worst Pop Lyrics of All Time … Ever!”, and “Don’ts for Weddings (from 1904)”.

The streets were full of buskers, and a lot of them were flat-out excellent.  There is some real musical talent in this town.

Isabella enjoyed their music enough to put some of her money in their guitar case.

I like the way they think in York!

Apparently York is infested with ghosts.  We saw several (like four or five) different Ghost Walks available for anyone wanting to explore the spookier side of things.  The kids really wanted to do one of the ghost walks, but the earliest ones began at 7:30 p.m. and lasted several hours, and we were afraid the kids would run out of steam that late at night.  It seemed like more of a grown-up activity.

One of several advertised Ghost Walks

Each street is more charming than the next. You could wander around for hours.

Street artist doing caricatures. In the background, you can see a slightly blurry Adam taking a photo of me taking a photo of the artist.

Isabella admiring some silver jewelry

Plenty of old buildings around.

At dinner time, we found a charming little pub that looked promising, but when we got to the door it had a sign on it reading, “No Under 18s Allowed:  Enjoy your beer in peace.”  Josie put both hands on her hips indignantly and said, “Well, what’s that supposed to mean!?”  Isabella said, “It means they don’t want any bratty little kids in there yelling ‘You’re poopy!’ at people.”  Adam cracked up and said, “That’s EXACTLY what that means.”

We now have a handy shorthand for our kids.  Instead of saying, “You are behaving poorly in public, thereby bringing shame upon your countrymen and upon our family.  Improve yourself at once!” we can just make meaningful eye contact with the offending kid and hiss in an English accent, “You’re poopy.“