Time to Punt

We arrived in Cambridge at about three in the afternoon. We made ourselves at home at the Holiday Inn and took a quick inventory of our room. The girls were nauseous and tired, but hungry. So it was our job to find some takeout food. We went to the front desk and got some written direction but they proved to be wrong. Thank God we brought the TomTom. So we decided to head toward the city center. Certainly we would find some international food there.

You see, at this point in our trip we had given up on English food. Several folks told us it was great and it did not deserve its bad rap. So, being nice folks, we kept trying. But with the exception of one pub in London, we found English food terrible. So we vowed to stay away from it if at all possible. We would focus our appetites on international cuisine.

Only a couple miles away from the Holiday Inn we found an Indian restaurant. We knew it was going to be good because it had a line. I parked illegally and left Sheri with the car. I went in and ordered, and waited. As I waited the kind folks kept me talking about life in the United States. They were fascinated with my American accent and that I was amazingly rich. They deduced this because I was from California. They were disappointed that I had not seen any movie stars but honored that I chose their restaurant. They even gave me some free cracker-bread stuff. We devoured their food once back at the hotel. The girl’s nausea had passed and they all went swimming. They came back with a story about swimming with the fattest lady they had ever seen. I guessed she displaced a lot of water. Because once she got out, they could touch their toes in the deep end.

The next day was going to be adventure because we had not planned on staying in Cambridge. Everywhere else I had researched our options. We were going to make this up. So we programmed our TomTom and headed off to the city centre. We parked in the largest parking garage I had ever seen. Then we began what turned out to be about a two mile walk. The girls really wanted to go shopping, again. I was going to find something interesting to do. So Sheri and I left the girls and would meet up with them later.

The first place we went was up the tower of a church across from King’s College. The minute we reached the top we were surrounded by our old friends, the Japanese tourists. Once again we were pushed out of the way, poked, and stepped on. I did manage to get a couple of photos from high above Cambridge. But their noise and rude behavior drove us back down. Sheri then decided that looking at more old things was not what she wanted to do at the moment. So she went off to find the girls. I, on the other hand, went to the King’s College Chapel, by myself.

Of course it was amazing and all that. But since I neither broke anything or saw anything funny, I’ll move on to the outside. There was a giant lawn inside a beautiful square. A sign on the lawn stated in plain English, “Stay off the grass.” But apparently a drunk student didn’t care about the sign. He got to the middle of the lawn and collapsed, exhausted from his trip. Once laying down he sang about his adventures.

I continued toward the back of the lawn and discovered what I would later learn were punts. A Punt is a flat-bottomed boat used to take a huge amount of money away from American tourists. I returned to our meeting spot a couple of hours later having seen amazing stuff. My girls all told me of cute shops and other such crap. I told them of cathedrals, chapels, beautiful rivers and bridges. They were only interested in college guys and the boats. Please see the photo album and look at the pictures of Cambridge for a look at the punting fun.

After our punting adventure we sought out dinner, once again avoiding English food. We settled on a nice Italian place and enjoyed some very delicious risotto. Then we walked three miles back to the giant parking garage through a park named “Jesus.” The night brought a delightful swim and peaceful slumber in an American-style bed. Nothing bad happened to us this day, No embarrassments or unintentional flatulence.