Up early to go through immigration (Again!), have our final buffet breakfast & disembark the ship. It was farewell Thomson Spirit and into central Newcastle with a couple of hours until our train to York. Sean was more than keen to get rid of all his formal wear now he didn't have a need for it so we dragged our bags to the little post office which luckily had a helpful lady working in it. After weighing the box numerous times to get a range of prices we ended up taking the shoes out & sending the rest sea mail. Wandering back into central Newcastle we stopped in at the pub for a cappuccino & a cheap £1.65 pint (using CAMRA voucher). I went for a walk around the corner to donate Sean's shoes to the charity shop, and maybe have a look myself! Picking up Sean we headed to the station to get our train grabbing a Greggs Cheese & Onion Pastry & a Pasty for lunch before boarding the train to York. It was only a 50min journey but it seemed a lot longer thanks to a very irritating passenger who was trying to chat up random guys on the train & going on about her coke bottle with her name on it- need I mention she was in a quiet carriage! Arriving into York it looked like it was about to rain but we got to the Ibis before it started & checked in. We had only the one night here & there seemed a lot to explore so we were soon out the door & passing under one of the intact medieval city gates into the cobblestoned streets of central York. Walking up the crowded Shambles (a narrow preserved medieval street previously lined with butchers) it was easy to imagine a time when you wouldn't want to walk in the lower middle of the street due to sewerage & slush. Our next stop, barely around the corner was the massive edifice of the Minster which exuded all the excesses of the church. Short on time & not wanting to pay £15 (another excess!) we gave the inside a miss & instead walked along the outside of the city walls towards the National Rail Museum. This of course was the highlight of Sean's day as it is the biggest railway museum in the world. For me it was a bonus it was free but it was interesting seeing the different eras of royal carriages as well as wandering around all the different types of locomotives from Japanese Shinkansen to 4 of the 6 remaining A4 steam locos including the Mallard which holds the record for the fastest steam journey at 126 miles an hour in 1936. The museum also had the Flying Scotsman and a large warehouse of random train paraphernalia. After 2hrs wandering around in the museum my feet were getting weary and surprisingly so were Sean's so we wandered back through a city gate to the York Brewery for a well earnt ale. After trying the beers brewed inside the city walls we went in search of somewhere serving food & settled on Ye Olde Starre Inne dating from 1552 for a Big Ben burger each & some more drinks including an elderberry cider for something different. Heading back towards the hotel via Clifford's tower we sought refuge in another pub 'The Swan' when it started to rain on us. Being Friday night the place was heaving so after a half pint each we kept going, getting rained on for the last couple of blocks. It had definitely been a busy day as we had managed to rack up 24600 steps or 16.7kms- no wonder my legs were feeling worn out & ready for bed!