MOHITOS @ THE MUSIC HALL

and going down well! We are Wilton's Music Hall to see Harold Lloyd in a silent movie, B&W, I would think & accompanied by the theatre band. Young Sherlock is the title. Very atmospheric place restored with sensitivity, pretty cheap too, £8 each.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE...

On a nice evening dinner river cruise.....the fire alarms are going off on the engine room & we are rushing back to port! Wonder what's for 2nd course.

TRAIN MAD, GONE LOCO

Completely off track, locomotives all day at National Train Museum. Went on Shinkansen bullet train, only one outside Japan. This was a 1964 model & it was way ahead of anything we had. Attended a series of expert talks, Inc turntable, how a steam loco works and the museum collection store, which was great. That little working model is a segue (segway) loco that balances on one rail from 1925. That was topped off with an afternoon tea in a restored 19th century carriage - all lovely. York heaving this evening, the York races are on, loads of tottering young ladies in fancy frocks.

SCARBOROUGH

Took a day trip out to Scarborough on steam train I had "spotted" in 1960 at Waterloo, talk about a nerd, where's my anorak! Scarborough's a bit of a dump, went on cliff railway, or as Lin says, the vernacular. Journey good, had a chat with driver on footplate.

YORKIE BAR

Looks like choc bar but it's not. Went a lovely Japanese cuisine restaurant & it is a cod roe eclair filled with savoury cream cheese, topped with flowers. The cod row is green 'cos it was infused with wasabi. The other thing is beef tartare with gherkins & artichoke tsukemono. It is all small Japanese tapas, I guess you could say - delicious! Went on a guided walk through York's snickelways, which are little cut through alleyways. The guide was really knowledgeable showing us old Norman & Tudor houses, churches, Mad Alice, loads of places you would never find on your own. BTY, DMTF. 

WHO'S NEXT AFTER CROATIA

France or Belgium, final or 3rd place. All will be revealed. Now in York, bit frazzled after long day. Journey OKish with Grand Central, on time but crowded & not enough room for luggage. Never mind, bottle of Malbec eased us through. Went to NT Treasurer's House, went on roof and hunted ghosts in cellars. Cool yellow hats. Eat in pub courtyard, old spot bangers & mash. Couldn't see any spots on them, though. Finished up in pop-up Shakespeare Globe to see Macbeth do his stuff. Very bloodthirsty, severed heads & so much blood they had to mop stage in the interval. Lady M was a piece of work. A bit difficult, what with regional accents & Tudor English, forsooth!

ALL THIS & COLOMBIA TOO

More art today, in fact so much that we abandoned it for a ride on the tram to the suburbs and more time drinking & eating. The queues for the Duomo were ridiculous, so despite having tickets, we declined. Ditto for Uffizi Gallery. Instead went into St John's baptistry which had the art ceiling, great bronze doors & no crowds. The Duomo museum was lovely too, showing the construction & story of the Duomo over the years. It had the last Michaelangelo statue which he sculpted for his own tomb, didn't like it & smashed it up. Perhaps because he did the hands too big again, should have gone to Specsavers! Visited Santa Maria Novella which had interesting cloisters, the Spanish chapel built for Cosimo's missus had a wall of catholic glories, claiming it was responsibly for inventing everything, justice, maths, science - the lot. Above the inventors images, Ptolemy, Aristotle etc were young women in different poses, which is unusual for catholic churches, they don't usually like women who are not saints depicted. A bit of research revealed that they are not real women but simply allegories of the science or art depicted.

All that & we ay Colombia next week.