I have a valuable lesson to share. Ice is “see through”! I expect you thought that was “transparently” obvious, didn’t you? I simply found it quite difficult to obtain effective photographs of ice sculptures, out in the street. Excuses over, I did thoroughly enjoy myself trying, at York’s Festival of Angels.
An innocent bystander peeps through the angel wings
The city of York was as festive as anywhere I’ve ever been at Christmas time, and the Festival of Angels added its own charming dimension. Local businesses sponsor the ice sculptures, most of which are traditional Christmas images of angels and snowflakes. The large handsome slug produced an exclamation or two, however. The sponsor? A certain restaurant chain that accompanies its food with “green stuff”.
A slippery slug!
Mr. Slug illustrates the fact that I should have waited a while to let the frosting on the ice sculptures melt a little. I’ll know better next time but I was keen to see them all before too big a crowd gathered.
A rather frosty angel
Rudolph was almost defrosted
And the penguin was halfway there!
But the angel won, hands down, quite rightly
The crowd were mostly in good spirits as they wove in and out of the narrow streets. The presence of an “Ice Bar”, selling delectables such as Baileys in a frozen chocolate cup, undoubtedly helped. Mulled wine flowed sweetly too. And there was always Earl Grey in the tea shop.
It speaks for itself
Naturally Santa was there
And an Ice King, who must have had chilly nether regions
Even the barrel organ was feeling festive
Never tell me the British don’t have a sense of humour
York’s a good looking city, and there’s always something to see. I was also checking out Vintage shops, and in passing couldn’t resist a few more shots.
A former cinema, turned furniture store!
The Merchants Hall is quite special
St. Martin’s Church makes a lovely backdrop
I would have liked a few more ice sculpture photographs, but they do say “life is for learning”, don’t they?
Ice Christmas trees?
An ice Charter of York
An ice polar bear
And finally, a snowflake
My apologies for not doing full justice to the amount of work that must have gone into these incredible pieces of artwork. I hope you managed to gain just a flavour of the event, and my thanks to York for being gracious hostess to the Festival of Angels.
restlessjo 
Those ice sculptures are breath taking Jo! The sculptors have some real talent. I have only watched these in the movies but I hope to see them someday for real.
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It must be hard to do. I have no idea how 🤔💕💕
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The ice carvings are beautiful. Thank you for sharing them! Did you know that when they make ice for carving, they actually pump air through it as it freezes so it remains transparent. The only bit that is frosted over is when they take the pipe out at the end when it is all nearly frozen. If you just froze a box of ice it would not be that beautiful. 🙂
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No, I didn’t! Thanks for sharing your knowledge, and for your visit.
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