York through a child's eye

The last few weeks have been pretty busy with Dh working late shifts. As a result he got to see kuttan only for few hours in the morning. Kuttan and I spent the evenings together with the usual play time-dinner-bath-prayer-bottle-bed routine and saturday was the first day in two weeks where appa got to spend the whole day with Kuttan.

Kuttan's latest passion is trains. He absolutely adores Thomas the tank engine series. So we decided to take him to The National Railway Museum(NRM) in York.

The NRM is the largest railway museum in the world, responsible for the conservation and interpretation of the British national collection of historically significant railway vehicles and other artefacts. The Museum contains an unrivalled collection of locomotives, rolling stock, railway equipment, documents and records.

It was a beautiful sunny day with the average temperature around 24 degrees. After a pleasant two hour journey,we reached the beautiful city of York. It was our first visit to this charming little town and boy it was like stepping into one of the pages of an old English novel. It was really fascinating to know that the city has passed through the hands of Romans, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. Not surprising the entire historic core of York has been declared as a conservation area.

After an uneventful drive with multiple stops for wees(Kuttan is in the process of getting potty trained) and the non stop question of 'Are we there yet, appa?', we reached the car park. It was a very nominal charge of £5 for the entire day's parking.

I have to say that the entrance to NRM was far from spectacular. It was rather unappealing. There was a fairly long queue and at the counter we realised that the entry to the museum was completly free and that they only charged for the Norwich Union Yorkshire wheel. Kuttan particularly didnt enjoy these during his visit to London and so we decided to skip the wheel though at 60 meters in the sky the views of the city from inside must have been uniquely panaromic.

Kuttan was in awe seeing the innumerable display of locomotives. He was a tad bit disappointed that his favourite 'Thomas' train and the fat controller were not present there, the closest he could get was a little shop selling Thomas artefacts. He enjoys photography very much like his dad and so for his third birthday he was presented an used aim and shoot digital camera. He had a ball of a time taking pictures, some of which are included below.










More than the beautiful city, the amazing history and the lovely environment, it was the happiness in the child's face that made it a truly memorable day for us.