Day 24-26 - Cambridge

Monday

The first thing, the very first thing were had to do before we'd left Kings Lynn was more laundry. Fortunately Kings Lynn's laundromats were much less desultory than Oxford's. We tried for the local museum before we left (to see Seahenge) but it was closed. There was nothing for it but to press on to Cambridge.

However we made a small detour. Our route to Cambridge took us past the town of Ely. I'd never heard of Ely, but L had. This is why she'd heard of Ely:

The inside is just as remarkable. One of the most beautiful cathedrals we'd seen, along with Chartres.

We finally made it to Cambridge, and found a hotel with both proximity to the town centre and a car space. And a price to match. It was then considered prudent to actually book our accommodation ahead of time, rather then show up and just take what's available.

After we'd settled in (and our hearts had recovered from the tariff) we walked into the heart of Cambridge. Which proved difficult, because it was clogged with cyclists. It also didn't help that we had arrived at the start of "fresher's week".

Nonetheless, we found the Round Church after blithely walking past it, found dinner, and found our way back to our hotel.

Also we found the Corpus Clock just hanging off the side of one of the colleges - though it was difficult to get a proper shot of it - that blur at the top is a grasshopper type thingy that's the actual mechanism of the clock.

We had dinner in what turned out to be a member of a chain of rather ordinary gastropubs called the All Bar One and retired to the luxury of our hotel room.

Tuesday

Our first full day in Cambridge, and we decided to spend some of it on a bus. We'd done a Hop On Hop Off touring Singapore, so we decided to try the one in Cambridge. And then, maybe, we could have the bus plow through all the bikes instead.

Our first stop was the Fitzwilliam Museum that was hosting an exhibition of Han Dynasty artifacts related to burial. It was more extensive then we imagined, even displaying two full burial suits.

As with the Ashmolean, there was more than enough to warrant a second visit.

Lunch was at The Eagle - the pub frequented by Crick and Watson where they discussed their theory of DNA. In fact the local beer was called Eagle DNA - but sadly it didn't give me wings.

After lunch - it was off to another sacred sight: the Samuel Pepys library. The library is only open for one hour each day, and doesn't advertise its presence.

You cannot take photos inside, but it was a lovely space with the books in their original shelves, arranged by height.

The rest of the day was spent on the Hop On Hop Off bus, filling in more bits of Cambridge's past.


Wednesday

Back to more of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and to check out the Cambridge markets.


Then off to Bletchley Park via Linford Stables .

Day 22-23 - Kings Lynn

The weekend was spent with my nephew, for the most part. On the Saturday he had soccer and on Sunday he had rugby - a well rounded English education.

(photos available to family members on request)

After the soccer game we took him to The Muckleburgh Military Collection.

Janice first decided to show us who was truly boss by dropping us in a car park, miles from our true destination, no doubt still annoyed by our failure to appreciate her instructions the day before.

A reset of her instructions and we were back on our way.

The Muckleburgh Military Collection is a museum in a disused military base on the coast of Norfolk. During school holidays you can ride on tanks and other military vehicles. However we were there in the off session, so the rides were unavailable. The collection itself was still pretty amazing.

We took him back to Kings Lynn for dinner, finally having to settle for the very same hotel we'd had dinner in the night before. There's not a huge range of options in Kings Lynn.

The next day we watched my nephew play rugby, then it was off to the pub for a family lunch and to say our goodbyes. Instead of going directly home we went for a walk in the woods.

A brief note to readers

Sorry for the lack of content, but we have been having a wonderful time.

Massive update of our English adventures tonight (our time.)

Day 21 - Oxford / King's Lynn

This was the day our UK holiday really started.

We spent the morning poking around the covered market at Oxford and discovered a certain pub  where a certain ex-Prime Minister had set a certain record:

Then we checked out of the hotel (fortunately one of the staff could carry the suitcases down those *#$#! stairs) and cabbed out to the hire car company.

There we picked up our new companions for the next stage in our journey: Elsie the Kia and Janice the Satnav. Llyn named the satnav after every bossy female she knew. I just bit my lip.

We loaded up the car and threw ourselves in the mercy of the UK road system-

- which appeared to consist solely of connections between roundabouts. We'd been on so many roundabouts on our way to King's Lynn we were in danger of turning into Florence and Dougal.

We were doing fine until we hit the last roundabout and Janice requested that we take the "fifth exit."

This is the last roundabout:

It took four attempts to make it back to our hotel after a short trip into town. L still twitches whenever Janice announces another roundabout.

Day 20 - Oxford

Day 20 - Oxford

The very first thing we intended to do was a tour of the Bodleian Library, but we had to kill some time before the tour started and so, in the way of these things, we stumbled across a market, escaping with our wallets barely intact.

The Bodleian Library itself was astonishing.

I'm pretty much suffering from awe fatigue at the moment and the Bodleian offered no relief. The sheer amount of history encrusted within and without the walls is breathtaking. We were allowed brief, grudging access to the medieval collection, books so rare and dangerous that they were chained to the shelves, lest they start their inexorable journey to the wilds of Ebay.

I remember looking over and seeing an original volume of Samuel Johnson's dictionary. My iphone quailed before its authority.


We weren't allowed to take photos of the books, but over the road from the Bodleian is Blackwell's which, despite having a mere three floors of books, also boasts the infamous Norrington Room. I have tried to give an idea of the scale of the Norrington Room below:

Despite our awe being struck so consistently and comprehensively it had concussion, we dragged it, bruised and protesting, into the Ashmolean. We thought the Edward Lear exhibit would give it a soothing balm. We had underestimated the Ashmolean. Lear was not just a purveyor of nonsense rhymes, he was a talented painter of landscapes and wildlife, which made up the bulk of the exhibition.


The rest of the Ashmolean is staggering. Our awe had now assumed a foetal position.

Here's one example: a Stradivarius

We had just enough cognitive strength to make it to dinner, then back up all those stairs to recharge for the drive tomorrow.

Day 19 - Over the channel

We left early in the morning for the Eurostar to London. The only discernible differences between it and the other trains were; going through customs and the transit lounge at the start of the trip, and the 15 minutes of darkness near the end.

We arrived in St Pancras then caught the tube to Paddington where we encountered our nemesis: stairs. We struggled manfully with the bags and made it in time to catch the train to Oxford.

The train travel was smooth and uneventful, however once we arrived in Oxford, we faced that terror that all long range tourists must face after weeks on the road: the laundromat.

Our avuncular taxi driver admitted that very few laundromats were left in Oxford, so he drove us to the one he used to scam 50p coins from.

So, our first experience of Oxford was sitting in a laundromat that David Lynch would have found too depressing to film. We were joined by Col, an American, also on his 10th wedding anniversary, so he kept us company during the final spin cycle.

A cab to the hotel which was right in the heart of Oxford (good) but up several sets of narrow stairs (bad). Fortunately they had staff to help us with our bags, but the staff were not apparently available to ferry us down to the street and back.

Oxford!

I found a sim for my phone and we somehow stumbled into Waterstones (which was preparing for the launch of the next JK Rowling book) where we, somehow, managed to walk out with just one bag of books.

We were opposite the college that Lord Peter Wimsey attended (along with a lot less fictional luminaries) and we found his regular drinking hole (at the other side of the block.)

L, as can be imagined, was in heaven.

Day 18 - Chartres

One last full day in France and what better way to spend it than visiting another cathedral.

But not just any old cathedral, we'd already seen them after all. This was the big one, the Cathedral at Chartres.

Mindbogglingly ornate on the outside, it is even more spectacular on the inside, as its stained glass windows had even survived the French Revolution. It was built on a Roman site and has multiple layers from the Middle Ages, to the Gothic and Neo Gothic periods.

The Museum of Stained Glass nearby has close-ups of all the windows, so you can make out the finer details.

A train home and now it's our last night in Paris .

Day 17 - back to Paris

This was a travelling day. We went back to Paris and checked into the Mercure next to the Garden du Nord. We took a taxi from Austerlitz to Nord, rather than struggle with the suitcases through the Metro again.

The Gard du Nord area is very very different to St Germaine and we had just spent about a week in the country so we were suffering a bit of culture shock. We had to mail some stuff home, so we set off in search of packing tape. In, probably, the wrong direction. Eventually, with the help of a friendly news vendor, we found the Virgin Megastore which had a stationery department.

That was our excitement for the day.

Day 16 - the rest of Blois

By Sunday we were pretty much Musee'd and Chateau'd out, so we just planned a quiet day exploring the rest of Blois.

And Blois helped us with our quiet day by closing pretty much everything.

We walked over the bridge to the other side of the Loire and found a small park to watch the river run sluggishly by. There's not much depth to the Loire at Blois.

We walked up to the cathedral but, being a Sunday morning, it appeared to be in some use. We took photos of the outside then went back to the Chateau to watch the dragons again.

Nearby was the Museum of Natural History, but it was undergoing renovation and only had one room open. Still, we found out there were European beavers, so that's something.

We were pretty worn out by that stage, but were made one last effort to climb back up to the cathedral, to see the inside.

The trip was worth it, as we found some lovely gardens behind it.

Back down the hill again to find somewhere open for dinner, and one last weary trek back to the hotel for our last sleep in Blois.

Day 14 - the Chateaus of Blois & Chambon

Blois used to house the Royal Palace before it was moved to Paris. And It was from Blois that we got the fleur-de-lys as a symbol of French royalty. Needless to say, the Chateau de Blois was full of the damn things.

Chateau de Blois

The Throne - covered in the damn things

Inside the Chateau

In the afternoon we took a bus out to one of the grandest and largest Chateaus of them all, the Chateau de Chambord:

 To scale

 The Chateau de Chambord is rumoured to be designed by Leonardo da Vinci - it is based on a modular design and has a double spiral staircase at its centre which bears an uncanny resemblance to the DNA do.uble helix.

Okay, the interior of the staircase looks more like 2001

 And the upstairs roof area reminded me of Gormenghast

 Chambord Is what I would call an unhaunted house. It's to big for any kind of homeliness or comfort. Only sections of it have been in use at any given time, it's more an act of conspicuous consumption than a domicile.

Day 15 - Day trip to Tours

Aside from the dragons, Robert-Houdin, and the Chateau, Blois is central to the Loire Valley district so is a good central location to see the rest of the Loire Valley.

We had a choice between seeing Tours or Orleans, and Tours won.

(I apologise for the paucity of the following entries, but we have no free wifi at the moment.)

Just as we left the train station we saw a Petit Train just about to leave. These are small trains for tourists that run past points of interest. We'd noticed one in Nantes, so we decided to take the tour in Tours, so to speak.

The train took us past the Basilica of St Martin, Charlemagne's Tower, the old town, the banks of the Loire and the Cathedral.

Based on an internet recommendation we visited the Musée de Compagnonne (Museum of Companionship). This is a museum dedicated to the masterworks of craft guild apprentices and so is full of weird objects and craft works. Well worth seeing, some photos from it appear below.

We had lunch in the Old Town and went through a few of the shops before checking out the Basilica of St Martin and the nearby museum which taught us more about the cloak ripper than we ever wanted to know. The English on the exhibits ran out just before the archaeological section. We assume Romans were involved.

Then off to the Cathedral and the Museum of Fine Arts that had a collection of justly neglected works - and a surprise Monet and Ernst.

We hope to return to Tours, one day just wasn't enough.

Day 13a - The Dragons of Blois

They deserve their own post:

We must have watched them about four times now.

Day 13 - Blois

The wifi in our hotel is a bit flakey. So I'm hoping to do a bigger update later.

Blois is fairly small compared to Nantes and both its attractions to us are right next to each other. And there's nowhere to eat near the hotel (which is just next to the station.) In a way it reminds me of the historical French equivalent of Glen Innes.

The point to staying here is that it's central to the Chateaus of the Loire valley. We plan on day trips to Tours and Orleans (so it's handy that we're just across from the station.)

I'll digress here just to point out how amazing the French train system has been, especially for those with minimal French. I was able to book our train tickets on the net, but collect them at the station from a automated ticket machine, just by using the same credit card. C'est magnifique!

We immediately availed ourselves of the first major attraction in Bloyes - the Robert-Houdin Maison de la Magir. Robert-Houdin was the father of modern stage magic,and a personal hero of mine and the museum devoted to his memory is absolutely delightful.

For a start it has - ah, but I'll save that for when I can embed a YouTube video. Instead, as I'm composing this on my iPhone I'll attach a couple of photos at the end.

The museum has it's own live magic show (which was delightful), a room devoted to optical illusions, an exhibition of puppetry, a floor devoted to Robert-Houdin himself (who had a fully automated house a century before Bill Gates) and finally - the Hallucinoscope, which is hard to describe, but entails walking through a darkened exhibit wearing mirrors under your eyes that reflect the ceiling - do it created the illusion of walking underwater.

Another wonderful, one of a kind experience from France!

Day 11 & Day 12 - Nantes

Yes we wanted to spend our tenth wedding anniversary in Paris. I know it's a cliche but we love the city, the people, the feel of Paris - it's not just the city of romance but a city of pure life. But we had another destination in mind in France, a place we'd only heard of in legend and YouTube videos - Les Machines de L'ile at Nantes.

Basically we wanted to go to Nantes to ride in an elephant.

This elephant.

 This is what it looks like in motion.

Llyn also went for a ride on a mechanical heron (a prototype for a new project - The Heron Tree - which is due for completion in 2018) and we saw their mechanical caterpillar.

Here's the caterpillar in motion

The next day we returned for a ride on their Verne inspired carousal.

Here are some more of the amazing sights from Les Machines de L'Ile

It's like a Terry Gilliam redesign of Disneyland. Nantes is the home town of Jules Verne and like Verne it had a delightful confluence of the past and the future. We tried to get to the Jules Verne museum but, like so much of Nantes, it was closed on Tuesday (or Dimarche as I know now to look for. ) An anticlimax to the titanic struggle Llyn had with her natural enemy, a steep flight of stairs. Today we wandered up the road to the Cathedral of St Pierre and St Paul - a building that survived fire, revolution and the explosion of a nearby Jacobin arsenal.

Said arsenal was part of the Chateau Duc d'Bretagne where we wandered the ramparts overlooking the rest of Nantes before being absorbed by the museum. The museum not only covered the history of the original inhabitants of the Chateau but the history of Nantes itself, and we found we had run our of time as we wanted to ride on the carousel.


Tomorrow, we're off to Blois but we're already planning our return to Nantes.