All the traveling I have done so far was with school. Although we get some information and the school gets us to our destination we are on our own. If you have been reading previous posts you know that Laurel and pretty much do the tourist thing. We try to get out of the box some and try some different food or do a local thing, but generally we just spend time getting lost and seeing cool things that you may have seen on a postcard because they are so famous. This weekend we didn't have to be aimless tourist because we had tour guide Cody! Cody is going to school at Cambridge. He is a year older than Laurel and I. I had wanted to visit Cambridge and Cody offered to be our host, so it was perfect.
We rode the train to Cambridge and that was quite the experience in of itself. We had purchased our tickets online a few weeks ago and then we picked them up at the train station. First, the machine spit our 9 tickets! We were confused. The arrival/departure board only has the final destination of the trains not the stops in between, so it was difficult to know which one was our train since we weren't familiar with the routes. We figured it out and came to really like the train. It has nice seats and it is smooth. Our train ride was only an hour and a half total (we had to take two trains to get to Cambridge), so it was a good ride. Once we arrived at Cambridge Cody met us at the train station. It was so nice not to be completely lost right from the beginning. We went back to the Queen's Wing where Cody lives and dropped off our stuff.
We spent the day going around to the different colleges and seeing Cambridge. It is a very cool place. They had craft shows and markets and lots of very old colleges. Cambridge has 29 colleges and they are all over the city. I had a cornish pasty (traditional English food) for lunch with Blackcurrent juice. It was very good!! We had lots of fun and it was so nice to have the wonderful Cody to show us around. Mid afternoon we met Ashton Botts who is studying at Oxford. She had ridden the bus from Oxford. It was like a Jewell reunion! The rest of the day consisted of catching up and meeting some of Cody's new English friends. We went to a pub called the Flying Pig and that was fun too! We ended the night by watching V for Vendetta-I think I need to watch it again when I am not so tired.
Sunday was a wonderful day as well. We went to church at King's College Chapel. The chapel was amazing. The largest vaulted ceiling in the world(according to Cody)!
I didn't take an pictures because it was a service and you weren't supposed to. There was a boys choir. They were amazing. I really can't put into words how much I was in awe of the choir. Their were boys age 7 or so up to college age. They younger boys sang the alto and soprano and the older ones carried the base and tenor. There was also a string quartet that was amazing and they played with them. We even took communion. I was in awe of the whole service. I was so happy that we just didn't sleep in and miss something like that. The picture to the right is King's College Chapel-where we went to church. After church we ate at Nando's. Laurel and I had eaten at one of these in London and really liked it. This one wasn't as good as the one in London, but still it was a good time.
After that we just walked around a bit more and then went back to the Queen's Wing and chatted until we all had to go back to our real lives.
It truly was such the perfect weekend. I got to see some familiar faces which I really needed after this past week. I also met more British people and that is always funny! Thanks to Cody for having us. We really loved it all!
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