Cambridge

Friday we set sail for lovely Cambridge, home of two compatriots of Tripp from his travels in Brazil the previous summer, who offered to show us around this historic town for a couple of days. We arrived at the train station and walked five minutes to where one of these gracious hosts, Lizzy, lives on Mill Road, surrounded by ethnic food markets and Charity stores. After dumping our packs we went in search of our other contact Katie and toured the historic King’s College Chapel, constructed by Henry VI and later added onto by Henry VIII, and were amazed at the multitude of miracles that were recorded on a map of England inside the Chapel, including the miraculous removal of a bean from the ear of a man where it had been lodged for 37 years, jolly good show I say! Also because Lizzy was a student of St. John’s College we were able to get the key to the tower of their chapel, which looms over the entire city and provided some great vistas from the roof after the precarious climb up the twisting spiral staircase. The next order of the day was punting, a truly English tradition involving a flat bottomed boat about the size of a canoe that is “punted” along a slow moving river with a long pole. We had previously stocked up on sandwiches and crisps from the local Sainsbury’s and so spent a happy two hours drifting down the river Cam, learning (or in my case remembering) how to steer around the irritable river guides. Finally it was time for the thirty-fifth annual beer festival on Jesus Green, hosted and run by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, with hundreds of different ales, bitters, and stouts from all over England. The bars were organized by district, North, South, East Anglia, and even a bar dedicated to Cambridgeshire breweries, and some of the beers had memorable names to go along with the wonderful flavor, my favorite was Comrade Bill Bartram’s Anti-Imperialist Soviet Ale. After five hours of drinking and merry-making we waltzed off to the theater to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I found it to be highly entertaining and a good 2 hours or so of action sequences and chase scenes, Tripp on the other hand thought the film was dull and decided to sleep for almost the duration, waking for the final scene to give it two thumbs down and throw popcorn at a kid in the front while yelling “Doctor Jones! Doctor Jones!” We finished the day with a proper paper cone of chips and a long sleep on Lizzy’s couch. The next day we woke to get a real English breakfast a local café, consisting of eggs, toast, beans, tomatoes, and tea, which works wonders when your head feels several sizes too large after a long night. Lizzy then took us round the Fitzwilliam museum, which is incredibly ornate and houses some of the lesser known works of artists ranging from Picasso to Degas and Rodin, well worth a visit. We then said our goodbyes and caught the afternoon train back to Liverpool Street station.

Swan on the River Cam

Beer Fest Festivities

Captain Nelson

King’s College

Punting on the River Cam

We returned to Buckhurst Hill late that afternoon, freshened up, and headed to Guanabara, London’s Brazilian night club with live samba, caipirinhas, and many of my English amigos I met while in Brazil last summer. It was great seeing everyone and artificially re-living “a vida carioca.” I chipped my tooth, unfortunately, but only slightly and surprisingly not due to personal clumsiness. Someone’s forceful elbow created a small chain reaction which ended with my beer bottle hitting the bottom left corner of my left front tooth. I repeat, this was not due to my own clumsiness and at the time I had hardly begun to drink. Overall, Guanabara was a blast and it was wonderful catching up with everyone. Thanks to Suze, Adam and I were able to catch a cab home from the club instead of walking the 15 miles back in the rain for the small fare of £50. That’s a sarcastic comment because it equals about 100 USD. Jesus Christ.

The next day involved rummaging through heaps of records and flat caps, one to Adam’s delight and the other to us both. Adam likes flat caps…or at least trying them on and admiring himself. This all took place in Soho, mostly along a single street that also contained curry houses and strip clubs. We visited on of the curry houses, but left the strip clubs to dodgey men with missing teeth. We also poked our heads in to the British Museum to admire the Queen’s antiquities. It was wonderful to see all the colorful displays of relics from the beginnings of civilization to contemporary African art designed to look like a chair made out of AK-47s. Adam and I got lost from each other as the museum was closing and proceeded to wander around the museum’s inner atrium looking for one another for about 20 minutes until one of our strides finally caught up with one another and we were found at last.