Cambridge

We hit the road Friday morning for Cambridge.  We've been to Oxford multiple times over the years but this is the first  time we've ever been to Cambridge.  After spending a few hours there it definitely left me wanting more.  First stop, was lunch at The Eagle.  The outside was a little plain but the inside was so warm and full of different rooms of interesting pictures, benches with plaid seats, dark wood tables.  I could have sat there for hours listening to the people around us.  THis seemed like a place where the locals ate lunch.  There was a table of women near us that I think may have been a bookclub.  I kept trying to hear a book title so I could chime in with an opinion but they never actually talked about a book (which only made me more certain that it was, in fact, a bookclub meeting...)

 Waterstones are always around but in places like Cambridge there are real bookshops with books that have had many lives with many readers.  I found some beautiful leather bound copies of A Christmas Carol and wanted to buy them all.  

I love these Tudor buildings - they are still beautiful even though they house a Cafe Nero and other modern shops.  (There are Starbucks here but the two ubiquitous chains are Cafe Nero and Costa Coffee).  The university buildings were amazing but even more interesting was this tree with branches that almost lay on the ground - those are still connected to the tree. The little spots of color underneath are hundreds of crocuses (croci?  Yes, both are correct, just googled it)

Many of the streets are closed to cars but we were almost run over multiple times by speeding cyclists.  Bikes are everywhere, locked to every inch of fence.  That's Bill on the left in his Brit jacket and cap.

 More gorgeous buildings....

We need to go back in good weather and spend some time on the river.  Both Oxford and Cambridge (collectively known as Oxbridge) are known for punting on the river so we've got that on our must-do list for the future....