Day 18 & 19 Cambridge

The sun was shining as we left the Lake District. Next stop was Cambridge and we got there mid afternoon. Our hotel was not in Cambridge, but outside of it by about twenty minutes. It was in a business district and was a hotel very much like those we have in the states. It was our least favorite of all of the hotels as it was plain, cold, and the staff seemed very uninterested. We dropped off our luggage and drove into Cambridge to see what trouble we could get into.

Maude got us into Cambridge, but then Grandma pulled out her map to show Tom where some points of interest were that she thought we might enjoy. She had been to Cambridge before and so she knew what areas we should explore. Despite her expertise and his wife's reiterating Grandma's directions, our driver parked and made us hike miles quite a ways to the center of the city.

Cambridge is very much a college city with several colleges and universities. The University of Cambridge is the major school here founded in 1209 and considered one of the top universities in the world. As we hiked to see Kings College Chapel we stopped off at Pembroke College and wandered its grounds. It was graduation week for many of the schools and so many of the areas were closed, but we got to see quite a bit of the architecture of the city.

We had no idea what we were doing as we walked, but Darcy caught sight of the Arts Theater connected to the University of Cambridge and we walked down an alley to explore it. She is very much into theater having been inducted into a troupe and anytime she spotted a theater we had to check it out. Turned out that we were at the stage door where the actors and workers would enter and exit. Darcy was reading the marquee sign about the show currently playing called The History Boys. She was making comments about their good looks when a woman smoking behind her asked which boy did she fancy the most. Turned out to be one of the assistant stage managers, a position Darcy has during her high school shows.

We chatted with her for several minutes and she talked us into buying tickets for that evening. We had dinner in a pub not far from the theater and then walked back for the show. We loved it. It was a play by Alan Bennett, a British playwright, about a group of history students preparing to take the entrance exam into Oxford and Cambridge. It was very good and two of the actors in the show were performers that Madison and Darcy knew from American television shows.

The walk back to our car took forever in the dark, but Tom got us back safe and sound. Since we had a late night we slept in a bit in the morning and got to breakfast a half an hour before it closed. It was not a good breakfast and the staff started closing the buffet down earlier than the designated time. Grandma decided she was too tired to go back into Cambridge again so we left her in the hotel where she filled up on tea and tasty pastries that she found laid out outside various conference rooms for business meetings.

We headed back into Cambridge and walked around the city some more hitting places of interest. We saw Kings College Chapel, Our Lady and the English Martyrs Church, St. Bene't's Church, and the Corpus Clock, and we walked up and down Market Square shopping and eating.

Darcy had seen a fudge shop the night before that offered free samples and she had done some research on the place. She insisted we go there and we agreed later that it had been a wonderful experience. The Fudge Kitchen was across from Kings College and we got there when there wasn't a crowd. The bearded fudge maker greeted us with an offer to sample every kind of fudge in the shop and he gave us a wonderful background of fudge making. He was hilarious and entertaining and we were there long enough to watch his co-worker make a batch of raspberry and cream fudge.

We sampled many and left with six slabs (and I mean slabs) of different kinds of fudge. They do not price the fudge by weight, but instead sell by the chunks so we got plenty of fudge for our bucks. It wasn't my favorite fudge, very sugary, but we enjoyed it. For days.

We left Cambridge and headed back to the hotel to meet Grandma and some friends. Grandma's brother, Dave, married an English lass, Jan. Jan's brother and his wife live in Cambridge and were meeting us for dinner at the hotel. John and Sue arrived and we all had drinks in the lounge until our reservations. They were a great couple! We talked and talked. Sue even allowed me to speak in my British accent and told me I sounded very posh. The girls told me later she was just being polite and to stop talking like that, but I know that Sue was telling the truth. She was a very honest woman.

We went to the dining room to be seated, but were told we did not have reservations. Krishan, the young maitre de, was very nice, but was determined not to seat us despite the empty dining room. Grandma, who had made the reservations earlier, insisted that she had made reservations. The rest of us were finding it funny that the dining room had one table occupied and the rest sitting empty. Sort of a "no room at the inn" moment. Krishan scrambled around, mostly turning in circles. He kept coming to talk to me because Grandma was getting more annoyed and was having trouble hearing him which annoyed her more. I pipped up to explain that we had reservations and such and so he decided to deal with me which we found even funnier. Tom went off to speak with the reservation desk and Krishan handed us all menus so that we could decide what we wanted so that "we would be ready to order immediately" as if we were going to have to rush through dinner because of the crowd. This further annoyed Grandma and made the rest of us giggle even more. Having read the inside of the menu which stated, "If you are struggling for choice please do not hesitate to ask one of the restaurant team and we will endeavor to meet your request", I tried to have a conversation with the poor guy to offset our annoyance.

Me: "So Krishan, what do you recommend for dinner?"
Krishan: "Oh, I couldn't say."
Me: "You don't have any preferences? They don't feed you here?"
Krishan: "I think you order what you like."

Sue and the girls and I had several moments of laughter after this exchange, but in a few minutes of Tom leaving suddenly Krishan was standing by my side apologizing for the mix up. We were seated in the dining room and a knowledgeable waiter served us. He gave us all recommendations and was very attentive. We spent over an hour eating dinner and during that time the dining room looked like this:

The meal wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything to write home about. We had desserts and then retired back to the lounge where we chatted until fairly late at night. It was quite the enjoyable evening and we all agreed it was nice to talk one on one with people who lived there. We were all very chatty and we hope we were as entertaining for them as we found them to be. Thanks John and Sue!