Cambridge

A few weekends ago I went to Cambridge, England! It was awesome. I hadn't been to England in a few years and haven't ever been outside London, so it was really cool to check out another part of the country. It was also awesome to land and suddenly see and hear English everywhere. And then there was British junk food, which is awesome (hello Cadbury's and shortbread, mmm). And normal-person sized coffee (with milk even!) instead of the thimbles of espresso served in France. I mentioned I was happy right? Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying France, but change is a good thing!

So anyway, yes, I was visiting a friend I met during my semester in the Netherlands. He is on a different type of exchange program and got to head to Cambridge for the semester. Very cool. He has a cute room in a townhouse in a nice neighborhood right by campus. Cambridge is a great walkable town, so we went everywhere. The first night I got in lateish, so by the time we ate and headed into town we couldn't get into The Eagle, a famous pub in town. But we went to another place and observed drunk Brits for a while. Quite an interesting adventure. Something I've heard a few times that I can begin to confirm (from Sweden and Cambridge), is that the further north you go in Europe, the quieter the people are sober and the louder they are drunk.

Anyway, Sunday we checked out the Ely Cathedral, a medieval cathedral which was quite pretty.

Then it was back to town for more wandering and some awesome Indian food. India was an important colony, so Indian is the main ethnic food (like Indonesian in the Netherlands). It was a huge delicious awesome meal, and afterwards my friend headed off for a nap, and I went into town for more wandering (I know I keep using that word, but it's the best description)! I treated myself to a cream tea, which is tea with a scone which you eat with clotted cream and jam. So good!

 

Then I headed around some of the famous colleges of Cambridge University. The colleges are huge residential buildings where classes also take place. The picture below is the back of King's College. That is King's chapel on the left.

The next day I ...wandered... around town again while my friend got some work done (it was Monday--weird flights gave me a Saturday-Tuesday crack of dawn trip). I hit a few more colleges, including Darwin college and got some shopping done (it's impossible to find some things in France, like any kind of face product with SPF in it...). I also ate an English breakfast!

I met up with my friend and another guy I knew from Groningen (they're in the same program) and we ate (fish and chips--checking off the classic British foodstuffs). As we were walking around though, we walked past an area where a festival was clearly being set up. We wondered what it might have been until we rounded a corner and saw a poster for the Cambridge Beer Festival!!! Opening that evening!! Needless to say, I was a bit excited. We had to wait quite a while (turns out the opening time we were quoted was only for VIPs, so we just had to chill for an hour and half outside) but it was awesome. A huge tent completely lined with beers from tons of breweries. There was a catalog there were so many :) So happy. It was an awesome way to spend my last evening there.

And I leave you with a picture of the creepiest clock ever, the Corpus Christi clock. The giant grasshopper thing on the top rocks back and forth, "eating time."