Alice in Cambridge

Today we explored Cambridge!  Two days ago after posting a Facebook status about being in London, our friend Alice, who ran with us at Purdue and lives in New Zealand, contacted us saying she was currently studying at the university.  We made plans to meet with her today, waking up to check-out of our current hostel, then taking a subway to Kings Cross Station.  There we caught a train out-of-town. When we arrived in Cambridge, Alice let us drop our big bags in her room and then gave us a tour around, showing us inside the major chapel and her college.  We ate lunch at an amazing little Italian cafe that had all kinds of different focaccia and other full sized meals.  It also had the best hot chocolate in the world - basically liquid chocolate chips.  After that we explored a little more and shopped at a few small stores.  But the best experience was punting down the river.  Those little boats where someone stands on the back and pushes the boat along using a tall stick that can touch the bottom of the river.  Alice had done it a few times before, so she started us off, eventually letting Blair and I give it a try.  While Blair was a natural and wanted to continue going, I preferred to do it once and sit back down, confident that my balance was not good enough to handle running into the number of walls and boats I was steering towards.  We then went to a small pub - The Eagle - where the announcement of the discovery of DNA was made many years ago!!  There, we tried pimms, a very popular drink in the area according to Alice.  They were fruity mixed drinks that looked quite pretty.  After the drinks we ate at a nice tapas place, ordering six different options and all trying everything.  When dinner was done, we picked our things back up from Alice's apartment and bid farewell.  We're now back in London, staying at a hostel just down the street from Kings Cross Station where we'll board an early (we're saying 5am-ish) train tomorrow to ride back to Heathrow airport.  There, we'll fly to Zurich to explore the next location on our journey.