Travel Day to Cambridge, Afternoon Tea, & a Concert at the Botanic Garden

Originally I was going to wake up much earlier and get going, knowing that I had a busy travel day to get myself to Cambridge. After looking at bus and train schedules, I decided to cool it a little bit and got to the bus stop at about 9:30 am.

Bus from Bakewell to Matlock 🚌 Train from Matlock to Nottingham 🚆 Train from Nottingham to Ely 🚆 Train from Ely to Cambridge

Arrived in Cambridge at 1:44 pm; this was about five hours of travel!

I took a little sigh of relief being in Cambridge. It's my comfort zone. I stayed in Cambridge for 8 weeks during the summer of 2010 for my internship during grad school and I have since visited one other time. It is my favorite. It was good to be back.

I walked from the train station to Christ's College, one of the 31 colleges within the University of Cambridge. Christ's College offers accommodation for regular people to live in during certain times of the year and I thought it would be neat to stay within a college. You actually stay in student accommodations. I was able to check in right when I showed up at 2:00 pm.

Here's what the gate looks like to enter the college. You feel special walking through. The college was founded in 1437.

Here's what my room looked like. Very plain; the shower felt like a cruise ship cabin shower. But it was cheapish and totally adequate for what I needed. And it was cool to walk through the college grounds to get to my room.

From here, I had no real plan. I needed food, though, and I thought a leisurely afternoon tea sounded nice so I first went to a restaurant called Six but you had to have a reservation and I did not. Next, I tried Fitzbillies which I had planned to visit at some point in order to get a Chelsea bun because they are famous for them and I hadn't ever gotten one. They offered afternoon tea so that seemed like a good option.

Usually afternoon tea comes with scones, cream, and jam but they were out of scones. I was pretty bummed about this because I really had scones on my brain. But they offered me a Chelsea bun instead and I was going to buy one of those anyway, so it all worked out. 

After trying many macarons a few years ago, I decided that I'm not really a fan of macarons. But these macarons were amazing -- one was strawberry and Nutella and the other was lemon and they were delightful. The Chelsea bun was also delish!

After this, I walked around the familiar places. My old stomping ground of the Disability Resource Centre is nearby to Fitzbillies so I went by. I went up and down the little streets, just taking it in.

There were several graduations happening during the days I was in Cambridge, so I constantly had to wait for people to get out of the way to take photos!

I did a little shopping just to kill time before the concert that I was going to see at the University Botanic Garden at 6:30 pm.

The botanic garden is quite lovely and a concert there was great ambiance. I definitely didn't expect this many people to be at the concert. It rained on us for like 5 minutes in the middle, but I kind of enjoyed it. I really liked the group performing, they were called Honey and the Bear. It was super cute to see people dancing and you could tell the performers really enjoyed it.

Pretty tree on my walk out of the botanic garden.

I went the long way 'round to get back to Christ's College after the concert, through Coe Fen which is a grazing land in the middle of Cambridge where cows roam. Gotta look out for those patties on the sidewalk.

I happened upon the Mathematical Bridge, which is famous in Cambridge. According to Wikipedia, "The arrangement of timbers is a series of tangents that describe the arc of the bridge, with radial members to tie the tangents together and triangulate the structure, making it rigid and self-supporting." Whatever you say, Wikipedia! It was built in 1749. The sunset looked pretty with it.

And thus, my first day back in Cambridge came to an end!