Cambridge, Oxford and Bath

This will be a post with a lot of pictures, because I can tell you how great these cities were and how wonderfull, but you won't get the real picture unless you've been there or seen a million pictures.

Sunday 19th of July it was time to go to my alltime favourite place in the UK (well, so far at least): Cambridge! What an amazing city, wonderfull buildings, great atmoshpere, lovely people. We slept in until 8.45 which was brilliant, and possible since we were less than half an hour away from Cambridge, so not too much driving today! We parked the car pretty close to the city centre and headed towards Queens college first and explored it on our own. Absolutely lovely and as we were wondering along the gardens we saw loads of people in punts, and since the weather was fine decided that was a must do as well. So off we went and had this really nice guy, Louis, punt us along all the great colleges of Cambridge while we asked him loads of questions about the school/uni system in the UK. We finally headed off towards the tourist information office and were very lucky to find out that there was a city walking tour of 2 hours leaving in five minutes! So we quickly paid and joined the others who were waiting for the guide. It was an amazing tour with a really funny guide, who took us towards one of THE most famous and most beautiful colleges of Cambridge: Kings College. Just look at the pictures and be amazed. It all looks a bit darkish again, but trust me the weather was lovely and the buildings beautiful. After this we had a bit of time left to wander around the city on our own and ofcourse enjoy the surroundings: (this is the bridge of sighs where ledgend has it that students gave a deep sigh walking along the bridge because at the other end their exam results would be waiting). Taking in all this beauty does make hungry and we headed back towards the campsite (after a random drive around town since the Tom Tom would not wake up and help). Pancakes were made and we had a lovely quiet evening with lots of reading. The next morning we were up at the break of dawn (well almost ahum) and headed off towards the second nice uni town in the UK: Oxford! Since the last guided walk in Cambridge was such a success we instantly headed towards the tourist information this time and joined another walking tour. Great again, different guide, different jokes, but lovely things to see and very very interesting. If you ever go to one of these places do take a tour because they really are worth every penny! Just a small impression of the tour: We visited another lovely, famous college: Christ Church College, where some of Harry Potter was filmed (we didn't go for that but you could take HP tours as the pictures proof). We had something to eat at a market and found this great cakeshop:. And this is just an example! Sadly we had to move on again and off we went towards Bath, to the Newton Mill campsite (lovely one btw) which has an onsite bar so we went for a beer after dinner :)
The next day was to be a historical one: first off to the Avebury rings, which used to be a much bigger site than it's nearby neighbour Stonehenge, but is less know and a lot less visited. Beautiful though: and it went all the way around town. Just to prove these were not just teeny little stones: After a stroll around we headed towards its famous sister: Stonehenge I've got more than 50 pictures, but I'll spare you that, here's just one to give you the idea. An accident had happened somewhere along the road on our way there, but after a bit of a slow drive we arrived safely and enjoyed the tour a lot (you get this little device with stories on it which you can listen to if you want to, it tells you a lot about the history of Stonehenge and it's meaning). We weren't done yet, so off towards Bath (taking the scenic route hahaha) and went to the Roman Baths. Beautiful, but too much to see and to many signs to read (don't repeat everything people). Worth going into, but expensive. We had some McD (yep we had little time and money to spare since we wanted to do the free 7 o'clock guided tour around town). The tour was ok (it was free, no complaining allowed) but the guide was a bit shabby and really into architecture (person A made this, person B that) whereas we are not (we're more into history). Nice to have a look around although I have to be honest: Bath isn't as great as the guidebooks try to make you belief. Lots of construction work going on and the buildings are a bit dirty, not very romantic as its supposed to be. Nice, but not brilliant, although there are some lovely pictures to be taken: . Next morning we packed and headed into town to spend our last British money! Heading back towards to airport was a bit more of a challenge than expected (we wanted to avoid going through the middle of Bristol and put the Tom Tom on: avoid highways, very dumb idea). We ended up on all sorts or teeeeeeny weeeny tiny creepy steep roads nowhere near the airport. We were pushing it for time and were a bit stressed out (being behind a big truck and no way to pass it) but managed to hand in our car in time and had 15 minutes to spare at check in. Whooohooo! Then we found out the plane was delayed. Hmmm. First half an hour. Than it changed into: we give you more details regarding this flight in an hour. Even more hmmmm... especially since most of the flights were delayed and some even cancelled. We finally managed to leave over 2 hours late (the windscreen of our original plane was cracked and they had to organise another one). Gwendy's parents were waiting all that time at Schiphol. We had a quick chat after which they left for Friesland and I took the bus home to Haarlem. What a brilliant two weeks! So much to see, so much done. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got home, but what a holiday! Brilliant.
Next post will be about what I've done since I've been back, but I'll safe that for later.