Easter 09

Date: 14 April 2009 19:44:58

We've had a very lovely Easter this year. Like last year we went to York, where we pretty much ate our way through the Bank Holidays. On the way we stopped at a cafe on the A66 which has llamas, where we inadvertently broke our dairy fast - the soup of the day was advertised as tomato, so we both ordered that, and when our soup arrived it turned out to be stilton and broccoli. What can you do? As well as llamas, they also had some parrots and a couple of rabbits, who did try to do what rabbits do, but we were very amused by their ineptness at this - they got the one on top of the other bit OK, but weren't particularly discerning about which was the business end! Once we got to York we managed to get to the church where we got married (where they were doing a labyrinth) just in time to find them locking up, so we went to the pub instead. Whoops, perhaps not the most devotional of Good Fridays. In the evening we had a meal at our friends' place where we were staying, and then we had a rather longer lie-in than originally planned on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon saw us shopping and visiting the Stanley Spencer exhibition at York Art Gallery (well worth a visit if you're around) - I'd seen several of the paintings before (they are on loan from the Tate), but hadn't taken in his landscapes before, which I really liked. In the evening we met up with the outlaws, who are holidaying in Yorkshire at the moment, and had a meal at the hotel where our wedding reception was - it was quite strange being back, it felt so familiar but it wasn't our big day any more. After that we caught the end of the Easter Saturday vigil service at York Minster - this photo is from that.

Sunday morning meant of course Easter Sunday with all the celebrations that entailed. Which in my case meant Easter eggs for breakfast - what a civilised thing that is (my goodness it was beautiful!!). Then we met up again with HD's parents for the Easter Sunday service at York Minster, which was really lovely - here's a photo of Archbishop John Sentamu on the steps of the Minster after the service. We had a few hours to recover from our weekend of eating and celebrating, before returning to St C's for a Visions bring and share meal, with communion. We got to see lots of friends we've not seen for a while, and catch up with people, and eat even even more. I'm still pretty full, 2 days later!

We rounded off the day wandering round some of Via Luminosa (check out the Visions link for more details). Visions have been involved in staging a number of multi-media art installations at various places around the city centre, telling the Easter story. It is on this week as well as last week, and again is well worth a look. We weren't able to see all of the installations - a couple of them were having technical issues, and a couple of them were in shop windows but as the shops were shut on Sunday they weren't able to use them. But here are a few pictures from the installations we did see:

Yesterday we enjoyed a coffee with the outlaws followed by a leisurely walk along the river and a picnic with the friends we were staying with. I was really happy to see lots of signs of new life, including some very very very fluffy goslings! We got back last night, it's good to be home, but I'm very grateful for a lovely weekend away :)