Linking up with Holly and Sarah for their regular Monday morning chat about how we spent our weekend. Ours was fun and full. Here we go...starting with Thursday because I've told you before I feel like the weekend starts on a Thursday.
Plus we've been on holiday so everyday is the weekend right now.
Thursday the boys had school so hubs, Little Miss, Daughter1 and I decided to go into Cambridge and see what we could see. We've been in a couple of times since we got here, once for tea on my birthday and once for dinner at The Eagle.
After walking the boys to school we hopped on the bus to get to the city center. It's not far, but as I said in an earlier post, the bus is easier than finding a parking space. There are 31 colleges that make up the University of Cambridge, and we started our day with a visit to the King's College Cathedral.
Yes, another cathedral. This is England after all, and I'm here to tell you stepping inside one of these magnificent buildings never gets old. This one is particularly spectacular-
King's College was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI and is known for it's cathedral.
Little Miss pointing out baby Jesus in the painting. She is absolutely precious.
Also a bit of a firecracker, an excellent traveler, and so much like her momma our hearts can hardly handle it.
We came out of the cathedral and into a space known as The Backs. This is a park like area that's basically the backside of the various colleges that run alongside the river Cam.
We punted here one long ago Father's Day weekend, but this time we just admired the beauty.
It was a gorgeous day. My daughter wanted us to visit the Wren Library at Trinity College so we headed that way next. Christopher Wren attended Oxford, and is the architect behind so many of England's most beautiful buildings, with this library being yet another.
Wren Library has been open to visitors since 1695, but in 2024 visiting is only permitted between the hours of 12-2, with just 15 visitors allowed inside at any one time. It's a working library for the students of Trinity College so everyone is considerate of that.
What a treat. I'm so glad to have seen this, something most visitors to Cambridge may not know is even something you can do. It's a beautiful space. There were students working in the carrels along the side of the room, and they all had stacks of ancient books piled high beside them. Everyone is on a computer, but pretty sure they're not taking notes from Wikipedia.
I'd like to be a student here.
We saw a Winnie the Pooh manuscript gifted to the college by A.A. Milne himself. He was once a student at Trinity. We saw a Shakespeare folio, and several pieces by Lord Byron who also studied here. One piece was a letter Byron had written his aunt at the age of ten, and in it he says it's the very first letter he's ever written. His penmanship is perfect.
Remember when people wrote letters. Sigh.
We stopped for lunch at Nandos which is an old favorite. My daughter and I reminisced about trips to Nandos in the shopping area where we lived when she was a teenager. It was like our UK Chick-fil-a fix when there was no chick-fil-a.
It's actually nothing like chick-fil-a other than the fact that it's chicken and it's delicious.
We caught the bus home so Little Miss could have her nap and we could collect the boys from school. We had one of our favorite dinners Thursday night, one we'd been looking forward to since we arrived. We ate at The Dumpling Tree and had our fill of crispy duck. We used to get this a couple of times a month when we lived in England, but haven't found it this way anywhere near our home in the US.
If you're not familiar this is duck (they served it sliced, but we used to get it shredded) on a small thin pancake, topped with thinly sliced cucumber, thinly sliced green onion, then finished with a dollop of plum sauce, rolled up and enjoyed.
It's so good! We also ordered steamed dumplings (Max's favorite food), spring rolls, and a cucumber salad in some sort of sweet and sour style sauce that was really yummy. We walked home and I was wishing once more I lived where I could walk to dinner and then walk home.
Friday the weather was supposed to be mostly rainy so we opted for an indoor activity. We got back on the bus (all of us except my son-in-law who had to work) and went back into Cambridge to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum.
It's fabulous! And free, which is always nice. There are more than half a million objects, artifacts, and works of art in this museum and it's all beautifully displayed and easy to view.
They had color sheets for the kids to find various items in each room, with space to draw what they saw and everyone enjoyed the morning.
The armor was a favorite of all the boys, but there was an entire room of porcelain I could have lingered in a little longer. We had lunch at a cute spot near the museum called Fitzbillies which is a bakery on one side and a cafe on the other.
I had eggs benedict England style-a crumpet instead of an English muffin and ham instead of Canadian bacon. Delish! We bought some Chelsea buns to take home too.
It was drizzling when we came out of the restaurant so we ducked under cover at Pembroke College. This is the third oldest of the Cambridge colleges, founded in 1347 by the Countess of Pembroke. It was the first college to have it's own chapel, which just happened to be open. Visitors were invited to stop in so we did-
Another beautiful space.
We were home for naps and rest before heading back out to the main street for dinner, which was another favorite-Indian food. Hubs has been waiting for this meal since day one and it did not disappoint. We ordered poppadoms to start and the toppings were served on this cute little tabletop cart you could roll.
We laughed about the first time we had Indian food in the UK and the server asked if we wanted poppadoms. This was 20 years ago and we had no idea what poppadoms were, but eventually hubs just said sure, bring us some poppadoms. Then the server asked how many and hubs randomly said four even though we had no clue what we were getting. England is where we fell in love with Indian food.
Saturday morning found us back on the futbol pitch. The sun was shining but it was chilly and we enjoyed watching the boys attack and defend and improve their skills with the ball in this exceptionally well-run program.
My daughter and son-in-law had plans for a date day/evening so after lunch they headed to catch a train into London and we were left in charge of the littles. Nana played a lot of Uno. And chess. I have not played chess in decades, but I liked it and my 7-year old grandson knows all the rules. I told hubs we need to play chess when we're back home.
We walked around the corner and picked up pizza for dinner, got everyone bathed and eventually to bed before the parents came home. They had a nice time together, but both said London was positively mobbed, and I guess that's just how it is now.
I will have more to say about that in a later post, but we actually opted to hang out in Cambridge and the nearby countryside instead of going back into London this trip. Everything is a lot in terms of walking, transport, laundry!, etc. and then you add three kids to the mix and you've got to include some low key hours into your life or you'll be dragging everywhere you go.
On Sunday we walked to a nearby pub for a fabulous Sunday roast (some of us had roast beef, and some turkey) and it was every bit as good as I remembered. Potatoes roasted in goose fat and a light and airy Yorkshire pudding make this a pretty perfect meal.
We hung out at home afterwards, I wrapped two birthday presents and a few Christmas presents I brought with me, played more Uno (!!!), sort of organized my suitcase in preparation for the trip home, and caught up on my blog.
And that was my weekend. How was yours?
