Cambridge

We woke up and had another dull breakfast in the hotel, then we made our way to Paddington station. There we paid our homage to St. Arbucks, the Patron Saint of Coffee. It wasn't Bus Stop Espresso, but it worked in a pinch.

Our friends, Griff and Sian told us to take the train from King's Cross, so we took the tube to that station. We found out once we got there that it was closed, which was really a bummer since we wanted to take a picture of Platform 9 3/4.

We took another tube to Finsbury park and bought our tickets to Cambridge, only to hear from a rather rude rail operator "Why are you going up there" (to visit a friend) and "What did you do that for? You should have taken the train from Liverpool Station." So now we had to change in Stevenage. The rails were closed at Kings Cross for maintenance and they were doing electrical work on the line so the train from Finsbury to Stevenage was a slow diesel train. We didn't care much though, our ignorance tax was only our time.

As an aside here, text messaging in Europe is totally the way to go. I found that we had no delays in terms of sending or receiving messages. That's how we communicated with friends while we were there.

We arrived shortly before noon and got picked up by Griff in their $1400 van, bought off ebay. My first impression was how much the kids have grown! We had seen them over a year ago and Ceri and Annie were still young and Dylan hadn't even been born. Dylan is now a year old!

We had a yummy and tumultous lunch (what do you expect with 4 kids under 7 years old and a 15 year old). Elias was pretty wired and although he didn't seem to remember them, he had a good time

We spent the afternoon on a long walk around Cambridge, marvelling at the age, the multitudes of bikes, the recycle bins and of the buildings and saw some of the 26 colleges there, including the one Sian attended. We also saw the cheese shop owned by their friend, but it was closed, what it being a Sunday and a bank holiday weekend.

We finally hired a punt and went boating down the river Cam. Griff it quite good at it, Matthew, Ruben and I were barely passable, but all took our turns. The only problem was that after the soda and nachos, Elias got another stomach ache. We even went under the Mathematical bridge at Queen's College, which originally was not held together with any bolts - just interlocking pieces. Now it's bolted together because too many people were taking pieces out.

We had a snack at a Mexican café. Hrm. a Mexican café in England. They used what looked like Doritos for Nachos, but at least they used white cheese. We missed the 6:51 return train and aimed for the 7:45 supposedly to Kings Cross (which was still closed). Apparently that’s the faster train back to the city, even with a change. We stopped at their house for a while to visit. It wasn’t until we were at the station that we found out that the trains still weren’t running to King’s cross, so we took the one to Liverpool. Elias slept most of the train ride, but he woke up will the stomach ache flaring. He moaned and held a bag to his face, but didn’t throw up, the entire way through the tube and back to the hotel.

Griff told us a few interesting things:

• Why there are no garbage cans in London. It’s because terrorism, terrorism pre 9/11, terrorism from the times of the IRA. They used to throw bombs in trash cans.
• When we told him we were impressed with how the trains ran on time, he told us about a job where they needed to work on the timing for the tubes. He said that during peak rush, people pour down into the tubes at a rate such that the platform will fill up every 30 seconds. If there are too many people on the platform and more come down, people could potentially fall on the tracks, which would force them to shut down the line. So it's important that the trains show up every 30 seconds and no later. If a train is 10 seconds late, they slow down the the escalators that bring the people down the stairs. 15 seconds late, and they stop the escalators, which buys them about 15 seconds as the people will stop at the top of the escalators for about that long before they just walk down anyway. 30 seconds late and they have to shut down the line.People as fluid dynamics. Simulations are fun (and useful)

Click on the picture below to see all the photos from our trip to Cambridge.

Cambridge

Aug 26, 2006 - 81 Photos