A Month in York.
After a month in Edinburgh (Scotland), August was spent in York (Northern England).
What to say about York? It’s a small city (population of about 200K) with history dating back to the Romans and later the Vikings. It’s the favorite UK city of many, I’ve seen certain publications naming it “the UK’s best place to visit in 2024”, “the best place in Britain for quality of life”, the “UK’s favorite city”.
I don’t understand any of that. In fact, York was our most disappointing base since getting back to full-time travel 7 months ago.
In this post I cover our month in York, cover our costs, and tell you about our upcoming plans (which we finalized earlier this month. We’re pretty excited about them).
York
What’s so great about York? It’s got a lot of history. A good video here.
York Minster is the highlight, it is a majestic Cathedral. The city walls (or at least part of them) are worth walking. The city has many quaint, half-timbered buildings (which bring back memories of Germany) and you’ll come across many when walking around the old town. We enjoyed the Museum Gardens, a green space next to the river with an old Abbey. The National Railway Museum is great.
But honestly, you can see York’s highlights in a weekend.
It’s not the lack of highlights that put us off York. We like small to medium sized cities; cities like Split and Lviv come to mind. We spent May in Avignon which we loved. But York had none of the charm of those cities, it was jam-packed with tourists (to the point of being Disney-ish), locals weren’t that friendly (unlike Edinburgh) and the city is dirty. More on that when I write about our accommodation below.
So what’s so great about York? The truth is that I don’t know. Of course everything is personal and what you like might not be what I like. But it’s rare that our sentiments diverge so much from what seems to be the general consensus on York.
We made it a point to get out of York and explored much of the county of Yorkshire; visiting Knaresborough, Harrogate, Scarborough, and taking tours to the Yorkshire Dales National Park as well as the North York Moors National Park where we visited beautiful Whitby and experienced the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (the 2nd longest heritage railway in the UK). Those day trips were the highlight of our stays in York which do highlight a positive: York is well-connected to explore the region. While Yorkshire is the largest county in England, it is not that big: you can be almost anywhere within an hour.
Next: The Cost of a Month in York
The Cost of a Month in York
We knew that our time in the UK would be expensive so costs in August weren’t a surprise.
Accommodation
Our accommodation experiences so far in the UK haven’t been very good. After a disappointing apartment in Edinburgh, our Airbnb in York was even worse.
With a 4.96 rating on Airbnb, you really start wondering “who are these people reviewing these apartments?”.
Pros: modern with spacious rooms, big and up-to-date kitchen, large living room with a big TV, 1 ½ bathrooms, 2 upstairs bedrooms with very comfortable beds (something we haven’t had much luck with). Excellent location 10 minutes walk from the center of town
Cons: poor cleanliness, dusty everywhere, kitchen is greasy. The apartment smells, part of that due wall to wall carpeting in all the rooms (there’s no vacuum cleaner in the apartment which made us question whether the carpets were ever cleaned). There’s a fish and chips restaurant next door which brings in the rancid, nauseating odour of cooking grease. Most of the windows in the kitchen don’t open, the one that does open faces an alley full of the neighbour’s garbage*. There’s leaking in the upstairs bedroom when it rains.
*I’ve never seen a city anywhere in the world that handles garbage the way York does. Garbage for residents is picked up every 2 weeks. 2 weeks! When we arrived, our big bin of garbage was already packed to the top. Despite it being closed, it smelled and flies were swirling in our stoop (the bin was in a private entryway next to our front door). When we found out that garbage wouldn’t be picked up for another 10 days and that we had no place to put our garbage, I had to complain to our host. She came from Harrogate (30 minutes away) to clean out the bin and “relocate” the garbage. During our month, people would leave garbage bags and recycling in the alley and it wouldn’t take long for holes to appear in the bag and to see garbage strewn everywhere. You’d think that York was a 3rd world shithole. I’ve never seen such poor handling of garbage. How can this happen in a place like the UK? (PS we’re now in London where garbage gets picked up once a week. Better but…)
The thing is that all the above could be easily fixed. The apartment could be a fantastic apartment if cleaned and properly maintained…and if the city could clean up the alleys and streets.
Long Distance Travel
We paid a total of 121 £ (60.50 £each) for the 2 hour, 15 minute train from Edinburgh to York.
Short Distance Travel
Return train York <-> Knarsborough (about 25 min), Total 14.50 £ (ie.7.25£ each)
Return train York <-> Harrogate (about 35 min), Total 17.20 £ (ie. 8.60£ each)
Return train York <-> Scarborough (about 50 min), Total 48.00 £ (ie. 24.00 £ each)
All are day trips worth doing.
Total = 80 £
Restaurants and Cafés
We didn’t eat out much in York, mostly because restaurants are expensive and there were so many tourists everywhere. One very good restaurant (a recommendation from a local) was Taas for Nepali/Indian food. Very good with large portions (we always had leftovers for the next day). We ate there 3 times during our stay with each meal averaging 42 £ for both of us. Other than that, we had a very mediocre meal in a Chinese restaurant and a few sandwich lunches in mom-and-pop restaurants while on day trips.
We also spent quite a bit on coffee. For those wondering how much a good cup of coffee costs in the UK, we’ve paid between 3.50 – 4.00 £ for a Cappuccino so far in our time here (York and Edinburgh). That tends to add up fast.
Groceries
We spent a total of 905 £ for groceries in August (up from the 866 £ in Edinburgh). But that’s because we ate out less in York (our restaurant bill in Edinburgh was double that in York. We had lots of good local restaurants in Edinburg).
Again, groceries in the UK are about 10-15% more than what we paid in France and about 40% more than Spain. I always find it interesting seeing those comparisons.
Tourist Sites
York Minster: 36.40 £ for the 2 of us (ie 18.20 £ each). That seems like a lot but the good thing is that your ticket is good for a year: so if you’re staying for a while (like us) you can visit as much as you want. We came 3 times, mostly for the museum in the basement which has a lot of details (all about the history of the site including some Roman ruins). In my opinion the York Minster is very much worth the splurge.
Pump Museum in Harrogate: 9.75£ for the 2 of us (ie 4.88 £ each). A history of the city of Harrogate. The museum is also the town’s Tourist office. Good overview of the town’s history.
Scarborough Castle: 22.00£ for the 2 of us (ie 11.00 £ each). Come for the views, what’s left of the castle is underwhelming. For the price I don’t think great value.
All Saints Church in York: 5.00£ donation. A historic and very pretty church that won’t show up on any highlights list. Known for its stained glass windows. Very much worth a visit.
Tips for tours: 40.00£ tips on tours. As bloggers we sometimes get free tours and in August we were invited by Best of Britain for tours of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and North York Moors National Park. Both were very good tours and we tipped our excellent guide.
Other
The balance of our costs were some of our usual monthly costs including some new clothes and travel insurance (we have an expat insurance policy with Genki for emergencies).
Upcoming Plans
We went back to full-time travel in February and to date we’ve spent 2 months in Spain, 3 months in France and are now in our 3rd month in the UK. It’s been mostly very good (France being the highlight) but we’re looking forward to something different.
That will happen in November. It’ll be our first cruise and not just a cruise, a repositioning cruise that will take us from Barcelona to Guadeloupe in the French Antilles. An 18-day cruise with stops in the Canary Islands, Saint Maarten, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Barbados, Grenada, Martinique and then Guadeloupe in early December.
As I say, we’ve never been on a cruise and I look forward to documenting it all.
From Guadeloupe we’ll fly to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) where we’ll stay a few days before flying on to Cancun via Mexico City.
Cancun will be the starting point to exploring Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula using the (relatively) new Maya train. We’re planning to be in Merida for Christmas/New Years. In the new year we hope to continue our train travel to Palenque in Chiapas. From there we’ll go to Cristobal de Las Casas and then start travelling through Central America. How far that takes us we’ll see…I’m excited about it while Lissette is nervous 😊.
In the meantime we have to get through a month in London. As I write this (a week into our stay) we’re having another bad Airbnb experience and I found out that I need to get some (expensive) dental work done. That’ll be next week. Great. I think the UK hates us. I’ll be writing more about that in next month’s summary.
Related: July 2026: A month in Edinburgh
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