Oh, delightful reader, here we are and we are almost halfway through our journey. Sucks don't it? 😒
Let me just say I need to work on my definition of "vacation." Here's my current one: "vacation: an extended time away from home, ostensibly for pleasurable purposes, but including averaging 19,000 steps per day (almost doubling the American Heart Association recommendation), approximately 4 hours and 45 minutes of sleep per night, random food, and multiple conversations that can be labelled either TMI or NSFW." I will say no more on this matter, but be aware.
Day 3 began actually Wednesday night, when I had to study weather.com to determine what to do and where to go on Thursday. The proposed itinerary had us going to Brighton but I was warned by the London weather (the default on my iPhone) that it might rain, so checked. At one point for Thursday, they were predicting 90% chance (I think this was at 1300 -- BTW, my students don't "do" military time). London was a bit shaky. We were scheduled to go to Cambridge next week, so I looked there and !!!! no rain at all!!!!! So...
Then I checked the train schedule and rates to Cambridge and had to figure out when and how to go -- I could go from King's Cross (you know, like in Harry Potter) or Liverpool Street. This was made WAY easier by the fact the website offered tickets for less than half from Liverpool Street. So...away we went.
Before we reached Liverpool St -- we left the students' flat, minus one who had a stomach ailment, at 8 AM -- I counted I had made for mistakes in our journey. None terminal, but annoying me at my fumbling.
I could recount for thousands of words various exchanges with my students, as a group or individually, but I won't. I will summarize the pre-trip with this: there's was one scolding where I may have included the f-word more than once, having to remind her that an arrest would leave us both in a precarious position (at the very uplifting pre-meeting, the international studies director made it clear that "Dr. Hicks has the absolute to send you home if he thinks you are in any way misbehaving. And YOU will have to pay your own way. AND we've done this. I don't like those calls." Ummmm).
There was some sleep and some chat on the way to Cambridge, which is about 75 minutes from Liverpool St on the train. The terrain becomes very flat (the English fens are like that), and there were significant cows and saffron fields, which were in bloom (i.e. pretty damned yellow).
Outside Cambridge station, we had a discussion about what to do; I ended up with four of the seven with me. Almost immediately we were accosted by a salesperson for a punt ride: he made us an offer of 60% of the posted rate, and we signed up.
I took the students to Cambridge not just because it is a university town, but because characters in two books we read this past semester (Atonement and Line of Beauty) went to college there. We had to talk about what a university was, as American public university students don't pay much attention to colleges (LHU has 3 these days) and they aren't the same there as they are here -- as the punter said "they are private and self-contained here." We walked into one of the college yards, through a gate, and they were...well, awestruck is a good example. And we weren't in one of the famous Cambridge colleges (there are 31).
The punt ride (a punt is a flat bottomed boat that Tom, our punter, kept reassuring the students couldn't tip over) takes you "behind" the colleges on the Cam River, which is only about 20 feet wide there AND, Tom said, from "two meters to five inches deep." Here's a picture of the chapel at King's College -- one of the iconic shots of the town. The white building to the right is the Senate building, which was designed by Gibbs, and is supposedly a model for our White House. I can see it.
Here's the Bridge of Sighs (and that's Tom) -- so named, according to Tom (I don't remember having heard this story), because Queen Victoria said it looked like said bridge in Venice. Tom said locals claimed the resemblance was that both had water running under them. 😀
And, for those of you who forget, this is from 2012, my last trip to Cambridge, with M -- the beginning of Bob and Bing's Road show. None of us can believe it's been 6 years.
Today's food porn (definition question: is it still food porn if it's not high end food? I guess so, depending on what it is):
There was a crepe stand on the street in Cambridge, near a shop with "Cambridge University" souvenirs. Ironically, mine isn't the chocolate one. :)
Without a hitch, back to the train station, back to Liverpool St, then Baker St station, then the flat.
A pretty quick turnaround (no nap!) and off to Zizzi's for a quick Italian meal before the play. EH calls Zizzi's "mediocre Italian" (aka my favorite) so no pics were taken. Food porn lovers will have to wait for the weekend in Antwerp (sorry, spoiler) or Monday's lunch (food porn at its finest).
Then to Kinky Boots. I got a great price on the seats -- I paid half what the two women next to me, from Ashford (it's about 45 minutes from London via fast train, I was told -- it's southeast near Canterbury), paid -- but we were in the second from the top row. The person behind me kept bleeding on my shoulder (#Dadjoke).
The six students who saw it (the one was still sick, another had a leg problem and had seen it) loved it; one bought the CD. As perennial readers may remember, I am not a fan of the genre, but it was a nice. light and entertaining evening. In my mind, the plot has holes (real motivation problems, some of which was based on poor character development) and I thought some song and some dance numbers too long. At 2:30 minutes, it seemed long. To me. The women from Ashford loved it; the two women in front of us obviously knew it well, so bobbed and seat danced through the music, and the students...as I said, loved it. Let me say the dance troupe, the "Angels," were impressive in their dancing and I was particularly impressed with Charley's voice in a couple songs -- not so much Lola.
And that, my friends, was day 3. 19,000 steps, kink and college, and enough education to keep me in work. Tomorrow -- middle of the night Eurostar to Brussels, then on...
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