Historical York | Our First Visit & Not Our Last

At the end of last month, we decided that we were going to take a trip to York, as it was somewhere that we both wanted to visit and as it was coming up to the Summer Holidays we thought that the time was right. We both love history and York seemed to be one of the best places to go to get our fill. We will be showing you some of our holiday pics in another post.

We had decided to take the train down to York from Scotland as at only 3 hours to get there, as at the price of £42 each it seemed the money to travel time ratio option. Train travel doesn't bother me to much, but the leg space can be an issue as having 42 inch legs, outside not inseam! (that is 35 inches) tends to have me awkwardly bunching them up or having them stretched out into the passage way. Extra leg room is something that wouldn't go amiss!

Once we arrived at the train station we had to walk for about 15 minutes to get to the hotel, however, we had to go through all of the main sights, including the gigantic York Minster, so it was a really nice walk!

The hotel we stayed at was the newly built Travelodge in Layerthorpe, it's literally been open for about one month and the location was perfect as it was five to ten minutes walk from the major tourist sights. The walk into town each day was gorgeous as you could travel via the York wall and miss all of the hustle and bustle.

I really love staying at Travelodge hotels as I have always found that their rooms are modern, consistently immaculate and very well cleaned. The staff are very accommodating, polite and really take customer service seriously.

Upon entering the hotel, after the mandatory visit to the Costa that is built onto the side of it (Yes there is a drive-through bloody Costa on the site!), we were greeted by a very polite reception staff member who checked us in promptly and gave us our key cards and offered her help if and when we needed it.

Just to the left of the reception is the bar which opens around ten o'clock. The bar is stocked with craft beers, ciders and a large selection of spirits and liquors and is priced fairly, you can choose to drink in the bar or restaurant or, take your drinks to your room. I quickly got myself a bottle of Kopparberg Naked Apple as it's not something commonly seen in the shops in my local area. I've wanted to try it for a while and it didn't disappoint.

There is also a restaurant in the lobby area, that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, but we didn't try any of the food as we spent all of our time walking around York enjoying the sights.

As I mentioned above, the rooms are spotless and very modern, and feature very comfy king sized beds. Each room has a decent sized TV (I believe they are 32 inches) and Wifi is available for 30 minutes free of charge, after which you have to pay £3 for 24 hours. Air conditioning is also available if you need to adjust the temperature!

The bathroom features a large head shower, toilet, sink, large mirror with adjoining storage area. There are also two soap dispensers available for free - one beside the sink and the other inside the shower. We used both of these and they clean really well without drying out the skin.

Overall, we really enjoyed staying at this Travelodge so much so, that when we traveled to Nottingham later that week and stayed in a Premier Inn, we wanted to go back to Travelodge to correct the dismal experience we had in the stain [and hair] filled Premier Inn experience! One major difference we noticed (other than the cleanliness) was that you had silence in the Travelodge but the Premier Inn you could hear people in the next room, in the halls and doors opening and closing.

Believe it or not, the Travelodge was cheaper than it's competitors. Worth a visit guys for sure.