Fast Track Holiday in Cambridge, UK

The City

During the holidays I visited Cambridge, my daughter's home city for a year. Everybody knows the town for its university, but surprisigly few have visited there although it lies only 80 kilometres to North East from London. A train takes you there from The King's Cross Railway Station in 50 minutes. One way ticket for four persons (from which one is a junior) costs around £75. It pays back to reserve an off-peak ticket in advance.

Cambridge seems much smaller city thinking that it has 130,000 inhabitants. It's a beautiful city with old pictoresque houses. It can easily be experienced in a short couple day weekend holiday. You can walk all the major spots within a day and everything is close to each others.

Our Hotel

I had reserved a Queen Size room for us. The hotel, Double Tree by Hilton, proved to be an excellent hotel with outstanding service. We arrived to the city later than expected, because the queue for the London Eye took longer than expected, and asked whether it was possible to accommodate our daughter to the same room. Originally she would have headed to her lodgings which were much further away. Hotel welcomed the extra quest and with no extra charges - not even for the breakfast which is always an add-on in Hiltons.

The room was clean, tidy and spaceous with a small balcony heading to the Queen's College. The hotel itself situated five to eight minute walk from the city centre on a beautiful and peaceful river bank.

Breakfast in the hotel was excellent. The very traditional English breakfast accompanied with continental alternatives as well. Bouble Tree was the first hotel I've spotted in Britain where you could also have traditional English bloodpudding. Familiar for  Finns in a pancake format (verilettu).

I paid for £178 for the two nights. The price was Flash B&B special rate with no change to get pay back if cancelled. Considering the standard of the hotel it was a good price. Hotel had concierge services and you could get your stuff beared in and out from your room + got inside information to the city as well. I recommend to talk with the chaps.

There was one odd thing at the hotel though. Double Tree at Hilton has a spa with sauna, pool and gym facilities. In the pool area there is also jacuzzi. The rule, that no younger than 16 year old, is not allowed either to the sauna or to the jacuzzi is very odd for someone who comes from Finland. In Finland children have sauna baths since they were born - or actually even before that. I would argue the hygienic behaviour for a young Finn is extremely high when it comes to behaviour in sauna and washing after it. Janitors were watching how kids were behaving but they did not control whether adults were taking showers after the sauna before entering to jacuzzi. That was slightly disgusting.

For adults who prefer to bath without children there were dedicated time both early in the mornings and later in the evening.

Link: http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/index.html

Punting

I did not go for a punting. Actually I hadn't even heard the name before arriving to Cambridge. It means a traditional "gondolesque" river boat ride passing all the major colleges of the city. If we had more time that would definetly been an option. A normal punting ride takes about 45 minutes.

Shopping

Cambridge has all the major Highstreet labels than in larger cities as well. The city has two brand new shopping centres having around 100 or so shops. And since the centres are attached to each others, you have to do much less walking in order to drop in to the most famous British brands. And it saves time too.

Around city there are many special smaller shops and boutiques but I found it pretty hard to find better equipped gift & design shops in the centrum. But I did not visit the designer's market where it suppose to be much handicrafts and artists selling their creations.

One thing, though, is good to remember. The shops close early also in Cambridge. Most of them close their doors already at 6 PM, the rest at 7 PM. There is a "late night shopping day" once a week on Wednesdays.

Pubs

I visited some traditional English pubs while in Cambridge. Old establishments with good selection of local real ales and with traditional English food. Unfortunately, the others were not for the pies and I had a taste of the pie & gravy only once during our trip.

A remarkable difference with the pubs compared to London was the price of the pint. While in London in many places a pint of real ale costed around £4.50 in Cambridge many ales started as low as £2.30.

Colleges

During the walks around the city we managed to spot all the major and most famous colleges: Trinity, King's and Queen's and bunch of others. They were distributed all around the city and there were not so clear campus area than for instance in Canterbury at Kent where I have been studied. I guess the collaboration and exchange over the college boundaries can be challengeful in Cambridge.

Because of the distances between different university establishments, the cycle seemed to be very popular way to travel in the city.

Link, University of Cambridge: http://www.cam.ac.uk/

Guarded Bus Trail

I have an other posting on this, but when visiting the countryside, we spotted perhaps the most peculiar mass communication system I've ever seen. It was a very special ride in Cambridgeshire in a double decker watching the countryside where rivers were overflooded.

Travelling on Winter Time

It becomes dark also in Britain very early during the winter period. So, expect that in December there will be dark already between 4 to 5 PM. So, head to the city walk while it's still light outside.

The Oddest Clock: Corpus Clock

In the first night I heard some odd noise and clanging and spotted perhaps the oddest clock I've seen - or at least the most grimmest one. Learned afterwards that the clock was revealed in 2008 by Stephen Hawking and it's grasshopper is eating time. Below is the video I shot on that night.

More on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock