Since it was sunny i expected to have serious transport problems but unlike Brighton and Blackpool, which are obvious destinations, the trains weren't packed and the town centre not too jammed. Having said that, we did miss the train from London Liverpool Street and then boarded one to Southend costing us about 2hours on our journey because we had to backtrack and start again. The journey took about 4 hours instead of 2! Not my finest hour. We arrived starving and dashed to a pub recommended by my dad (who is a walking talking good pub guide for England and Wales) called The EAGLE. Huge yorkshire puddings, pork and apple sauce and great roasties went down a treat with a bottle of cider. The pub is really sweet, traditional and clearly massively popular, but there are a lot of seats so it's not a massive problem. Roasts were about £8 which is also pretty good.
Walking around the town could be done in a couple of hours. It's a pretty small area and the best things to see are compacted around the river and the town centre. Plus, many of the historical sights are university property so they're out of bounds. Once again i didn't visit the churches (gargoyles screeching per my other blog post) but i did see that the staff were incredible pretentious- shouting at visitors for walking on the grass and walking the wrong way around the church. Not exactly tourist-friendly.
We spent the day wondering around, stopping to eat and watching the punting. I just spent most of the day hoping to see someone fall in the river; either the over arrogant boyfriends trying to show off or the Cambridge students whose hair could probably do with a good wash in the water. Competition between punters (is that what they're called?) bordered on annoying as we were asked if we were punting today about a million times. I'm always an advocate of letting your customers come to you.
Unlike the food, stores were overpriced and i ended up paying £10 for 2 boxes of Pop Tarts at Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe. But i'd never seen cookie dough and chocolate fudge flavours before and i couldn't resist- plus, it's hard to not spend irresponsible when you digress into a kid surrounded by candy canes and lolly pops.
The nicest thing about having a visitor to show around your home and country is that you end up motivated to see things that you wouldn't normally feel bothered about. When you think about a weekend break or day out you may not think about Cambridge, but it turned out to be a classy historical town with more than restricted churches to offer. Interest in the University is not the only prerequisite to a visit, you just need a love of poptarts and roast dinners.
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