The first place that we visited in the UK was Cambridge. We flew to London and we took a National Express bus to Cambridge. The first thing I noticed while looking out through the window of the coach was rabbits all over the fields around the airport. While attempting for Tommi (my husband) to see them (unsuccessfully), I also noticed a few deer walking about. Very interesting start.
So, after about two hours we got to Cambridge. It was late in the afternoon but there was still time to go around the city after dropping our luggage at the hotel. We actually stayed at the Churchill College where we had a quite nicely sized room.
We walked downtown for a few minutes and we took a glance at one of the most famous attractions: punting.
We had booked in advance our seats, so the next day we would take the tour through the river. We went to find a nice place to have dinner and we found that our destination: The Clown (as recommended by Lonely planet guide) was actually not that good looking. We chose to find another place to eat and we landed at The Eagle pub where we had a great time, good beers and good food. Definitely worth going there.
After a nice after-dark walk through the city we walked back to the Churchill college and had a very nice good night sleep.
The next morning we had one of the best breakfasts of our trip (second best to be precise) and went downtown. My back seems to be a problem so every now and then we needed to stop and rest for a bit before continuing. One of the "resting places" we chose was Benets coffee shop. nice place with home made ice cream and great looking crepes. We didn't try any tough just a coffee for my husband.
At 12:00 we had our punting appointment and we met with the company guy in front of St. Mary's church. On a side note, it was funny to learn the guy was also Finnish. The punting was great and it seemed to be very popular, even among the geese.
After a few stories about the city and great views, our tour ended and we headed back to "shore" It was time for a nice meal and indeed we found a great place. I say its the BEST place we ate in the whole trip. It was an Indian restaurant whose name I'm very sad to say that I don't remember :( But in any case the food was great and here is a picture of the dishes we had.
While we were eating, the sky chose to give a nice shower to the city. It rained quite hard and for the duration of our meal luckily so we continued out exploring the city with very little use of our newly acquired umbrella.
I have to say one of the Greatest things we witnessed while walking in the city was a beggar. Yes, you heard me someone at the streets asking for money. But it was the way he did it that caught our attention. He was brilliant. So he got a few coins for his ingeniousness. We were walking south on Bridge Street and while looking around we started hearing music coming from the street a guitar and some singing.. but where was the musician? I looked around and I tried pinpointing the location of the sound. i looked across the street and there he was... i could see the hand and arm of the guitar player.. and the arm of the guitar itself, but.. where was the rest of his body? Oh that's right! this is where his genius brain tough of. INSIDE A TRASHCAN! This man somehow got himself Into the trashcan, WITH his guitar, and started playing from it. On the downside, if someone was to steal his shirt full of money on the outside, he wouldn't be able to catch them... So, this is how he looked like, and yeah, that's me after dropping a few coins :D
So our day at Cambridge was coming to an end and we went to pick up our luggage from the college. we went to the "bus station" which was basically just a street where the buses parked in front of Parker's Piece park and we waited for the next bus. Sadly the guy from National Express told us it would be difficult to get tickets to London since most of them were sold out. He told us we could wait and see if a few places were not taken when the bus came. so we waited for around an hour to see if the next bus could accommodate us. lucky for us, it could, so we took our seats and headed for London.
My Reviews
Accomodation
The "hotel" (Churchill College):http://www.cambridgerooms.co.uk/colleges/churchill.aspx
Very nice play to stay, very good sized room with en-suite bathroom, included breakfast, nice big area, and close to downtown. Oh yes, good price too.
The room:
For a married couple, it was weird having two individual sized beds (and by individual I mean very narrow). The room itself was very long and had an en-suite bathroom. Its weird to admit that we had a lot of trouble finding the switch to turn on the light in the bathroom! it was actually not inside the bathroom, it was outside, but far away from the door. Funny remark. Oh did I mentioned? We had a piano in the room! how weird!
The included breakfast:
Great start of a trip with a marvelous big breakfast! It was a buffet menu with eggs, fruits, sausages, potatoes, tomatoes, croissants, mushrooms, overall very nice. I had low expectations of British food from my brother's told experiences and I was more than glad to be proven differently.
No tv:
Sadly for us. There was no TV in the room. But to our advantage, the college was close to downtown and we only paid about 6£ for a taxi if we needed one. We basically just walked there.
In the city
Stamp of approval:
The Eagle: A pub downtown. Great food and with good prices. It also has a great feeling of the very old medieval pub/inn.
Punting: we took the punting tour (which is basically a long wooden boat "rowed" by a person with a long pole. We took this particular company http://www.thecambridgepuntingcompany.co.uk/ . We found it very handy because we could book it online and pay through the internet. We had our 12:00 appointment booked so we had no problems with tours being full.
The Clown: Although it was listed in the Lonely Planet guide as a very recommended place with great food. we found the food to have been sitting there for a long time. We didn't eat there since the food didn't look good. another indication was the emptiness of the restaurant. If it is empty... there's a reason. So we moved to the next place.
