For Good Friday, seeing as it was a bank holiday, Adam & I decided to take a trip out of London & pop to Cambridge. It was only an hour on the train & I can't believe we've not taken advantage of it before. We walked from the station to the city centre & our plan was to head straight to the Tourist Info & see what was what. That was until we spotted a shopping centre & we ended up veering in "just for a quick look" & lost most of our morning in there! Yoink! We eventually came out & ended up in front of Kings College & it was stunning.
We managed to get away with looking like students for most of the time so we didn't get hassled too much from the punting tours but then someone spotted my camera & came over. Seeing as it wasn't too busy we managed to barter the price down a bit & we booked a tour for 4pm. We met up with Dave & Heather for a bite to eat & a good old catch up & carried on with a bit of shopping (unfortunately I found a Fopp so ended up lugging round 3 new books that I couldn't just leave!). It was then time for our punting trip so we met a guide & headed down to the river. We loved the fact that Cambridge is a city based around clever people & someone couldn't spell 'official' on their t-shit (then again it could have just been to get your attention cos it worked!).
We headed down to the river to get on our punt. There were 3 other tours heading down at the same time as us & each one had 12 tourists. Let's just call waiting for the right punt organised chaos! When we set off the river was like the M25 with loads of punts & canoes coming & going. The guided punt tours were fine cos they were able to swerve in & out of the way (no idea how much practise that took to get them moving so easily cos when I was in Oxford with Mel, Michelle & Keira we never managed to move around so easily!). The problem was all the tourists who'd decided to take out punts themselves & were either just stuck right across the river or just drunk!
I'd lugged my lumix g round all day but decided I was having much more fun with my iphone hipstomatic & robot camera so really my dslr ended up just being a extra weight I could have just left at home. I'd put a black&white roll of film in my robot camera so can't wait to see how those pictures come out.
The river was a lot quieter down by Trinity College so it was really nice to have a bit of a relax before we had to turn round & face the hustle & bustle again.
2 of the colleges on our trip. Seeing as it was the Easter hols for the students, the colleges were all closed to walk around so it was nice to see them all from the riverside.
Our trip lasted 45min & was money well spent, tho next time I think we should push the boat out (excuse the pun) & hire a private punt with a driver & have a champagne & strawberry picnic as we go along, it looked so romantic.
We went into a pub called the Eagle which is where WW2 pilots used to come & sign their names on the ceiling using the smoke from their lighters. It was incredible to look at but also sad to wonder how many of the pilots managed to come back again. Another claim to fame is that the 2 guys who discovered DNA used to drink there.
They always say you learn summit new everyday - well I learnt that guys don't like to show off their knees in denim shorts! We went into Jack&Jones & Adam tried on these shorts below & I thought they were ace but he wasn't convinced & the shop assistant came up & said he was the first guy to try them on & how did he feel? When he saw Adam's face he pointed out how weird he thought they were as well & how all denim cut offs should be below the knee!
We wandered back to the train station after searching high & low for a cafe doing a cream tea at 5pm (we found one but they only had 1 scone left so we shared it & had half a hot cross bun each!). I crashed out on the train home after realising how much walking we'd done all day. As always it was really nice to get back to London & hop on the tube home.
When we got back we decided to have soft boiled eggs with soldiers but as usual it's never that simple & they all came out hard boiled (or undercooked) & I threw a little wobbly! The day I manage to have a perfect dipping egg & soldiers I'll be a very happy camper!
x x x
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