Day 10-Cambridge

After breakfast and 50 years of getting ready, we headed into the city of Cambridge, probably a good 30 min drive from David's place. The air was cool, and the fog had not lifted (and did not lift that whole day, which was fine with me.), and the morning just felt cozy. We arrived in Bike City...aka Cambridge. After watching the parades of bikes go past, we found a place to park in the parking garage and headed into the shopping center. We walked around the mall, didn't buy anything. We smelled cookies though. And I love cookies. So we followed our noses to the place where the cookies were being sold, smelled the air, didn't buy anything, and continued our journey outside. We headed over to one of the school's in Cambridge. I cannot for the life of me remember the name. Bought our tickets and David's ticket. Before we headed into the church, we went into a little shop to find a spoon for our sister since she collects them and since we hadn't found one yet, we thought we'd try finding one here. SUCCESS! We found a spoon! Bought it, and off we went into the church.
Which.was.stunning.
The ceiling was that beautiful stone scalloped fan design. Loads of stained glass. And dark wood accents. The pews, the organ screen (which King Henry the VIII dedicated to one of his wives). We walked all around that church, into the little side chapels and rooms, ooed and awed over the details and history of the building. I took a lot of photos. And then we headed outside to the courtyard.
Since classes were still in session, we weren't allowed to go into many other buildings but we still could look at them from the outside. They were beautiful.
We walked down a pathway that took us onto a bridge over the river. We saw people in these flat wooden boats, being pushed down the river by someone holding a pole (like the gaundala's in Italy...but less romantic.) it's called punting. That's when we immediately came to a group decision and said "WE ARE DOING THAT!" We headed back into the city center to find where to purchase tickets for the punting excursion. David walked up to a random man and asked to buy tickets from him, my sister and I were extremely confused why he would randomly ask someone, but then we realized it wasn't random, and that man had a sign for purchasing the tickets. Pheww.
We followed the man into the store, bought our tickets and were told to meet him back at a certain spot at two. We then headed off to go get food. Which took a while since I hate making decisions for everyone, and they were making me decide for the group. But all was good. We found food. Headed to a bench and ate our lunch.
After lunch we headed to the "spot" where our person told us to meet him. Except we were assigned some non social or friendly college aged student, who made us feel really awkward. And that's when we couldn't stop laughing and realized this punting experience was going to be interesting.
We climbed into the boat with 6 other people (us in the front) and off we went down the river. Well, folks, we were wrong about our tour guide. He had SO much knowledge about Cambridge, and never stopped talking the whole hours worth of the tour. It was awesome. We learned alot. One of the buildings in Cambridge Hitler requested to have if the Germans ever took over England, so he demanded that Cambridge was not to be bombed because his future home was there. So that building saved Cambridge. Way cool.
After the punting trip, we headed to a tea shop for tea time. We ordered tea, scones, clotted cream (for annie) and tea cakes. David had coffee. So very unbritish of him. Hahaha. After tea, we headed back to the car to leave the city. There was some hiccups with the paying for the parking pass, so we had to run all over the building to find a machine that would take money not cards. We eventually found one, and headed home for the day. Because friends, we were going to Nando's for dinner, and we were beyond excited.
Once back at the "flat" we lounged around for 2 hours, almost taking naps but not quite. We left around 6 for dinner.
NANDO'S. Delish. My sister and I ate our entire massive meal. And we were so proud. We even have photos of it. It was a tasty experience. And now I really want Nando's as I sit here.
After dinner, with our bellies unbelievably stuffed, we headed out for the evening.....except everything was closed. So therefore we went to Tescos and bought some stuff. Headed back to David's, watched a movie and partied on until about 3 am. Went to bed. Fell asleep immediately, and woke up the next day around 10 am. Awesome awesome awesome :)