August 4, 2016

Onward to Cambridge to visit Master D.  He’s been across the pond for nearly four months and even though we talk regularly, it’s not quite the same as seeing him every Sunday for dinner or dropping by the house randomly in the middle of the day.  We flew from Rome to Heathrow and then drove on up to Cambridge.  I love when I get exclusive or special permissions to things that the regular public can’t go see. The campus of Cambridge University and a lot of its many colleges are only open to students – so how awesome was it that Master D was a student and could allow us access?  The nerd in me was giddy the whole time thinking about the geniuses that walked those grounds discovering things like DNA (did you know that was discovered there?)- CS Lewis spent his last nine years of life as the dean of Medieval Literature at Cambridge. I’m pretty sure his essence was there too.

First we went to Master D’s favorite restaurant called Butch Annie’s.  Terrible name of a dive down in a basement, yet delicious! We ate there twice and both times I ate the best cheeseburgers of my life. Who knew I’d find the best cheeseburger in the UK??

We went punting down the river Cam – which is basically pushing a canoe down the river with a big stick.  Do you know why they call it Cambridge? – because “This is the river ‘Cam’ and this is a bridge – Cambridge”. (Overheard by a guide telling a boat filled with about 30 Chinese tourists and they all responded with a collective “Ahhhhh”, ….think aliens from Toy Story). I was the only one who didn’t try punting….I didn’t feel like taking a swim.This particular bridge has a special name….it is called “Orgasm Bridge”….too bad we did not hear a guide explaining that one.  This is the library.  A moment of silence for what I considered a little piece of heaven on earthMaster D took me inside to look around…..sigh….
So many cool views to soak up.

Tea time, I wish we had that here – I see the beauty in it, look at all the deliciousness every day between two and five. We went to the botanical gardens and took A LOT (thank you Ari) of photos of flowers.This was in our hotel lobby.  I need one of these book collage displays on my wall. 

We went to the Fitzwilliams Museum where I found my good friend Plato.

And then we headed back to London.  We got stuck in complete gridlock, nearly peed our pants until we got out and ran down the street to ask a hotel to use their bathroom, when we got back the taxi hadn’t even moved an inch.  B took it as his quest to get us out and went to ask a tour bus driver to let us scooch in front of him, up onto the sidewalk and then asked a parking garage if we could go through it to the other side to escape, after moving some orange cones, we paid 2 pounds and got out of gridlock.  B is our traffic escape hero!

Lelu and TT were not loving the traffic jam. But snapchat filters make it entertaining.

We got there too late to make it to the place Master D wanted to take us for lunch but we made it to see Lion King (for Lelu again!) and went to dinner.

We spent the night and headed to the airport and Master D sadly headed back to Cambridge for the last two weeks.  When we arrived at Heathrow, Delta had a computer break down – we sat there for six hours and truly consider ourselves lucky being the second Delta flight to take off from Heathrow that day.  A lot of other people had it much worse with cancellations or two day delays. Home sweet home.