Day Three - Rainy day in Cambridge

It rained last night, a lot! The news this morning warned of possible flooding due to torrential rain across Northern England. Fortunately it didn't actually flood here today, but it might tomorrow!
I've noticed that it stays light here until quite late:

I took these two photos from my window at 7:30 last night - yes: 7:30pm!

And this one is from 9:00 last night:

Fortunately I'm still quite jet-lagged so sleeping isn't too difficult even though it's so light.

Today I went into the city centre again, mostly I shopped; I did enough sight-seeing yesterday to last me a while!
For lunch I had a traditional Cornish pasty:

Inside were a few chunks of beef, lots of potatoe, and some onion and turnip, all deliciously baked in a thick pastry crust, mmmm :D
So if you're ever in Cambridge, I suggest you visit this place:

This shop faces into Market Square, which has a general market (food stalls, fruit and veg stalls, clothing, souvenirs, paintings, jewellery etc) from Monday to Saturday, then on Sunday they have stalls with more arts and crafts stuff.

Great St Mary's church is in the background here

I also went to Cath Kidston :D (the white building), Poll appreciates Cath Kidston ;)

Tomorrow I will be exploring inner London with my friend Ben who is a fellow former-Northcliffean and now lives in Paris :)

Day Two - In and around Cambridge city centre

I slept for fourteen hours last night. When I woke up I felt like I could sleep even longer, but I made myself get up and have breakfast downstairs, which consisted of a croissant, a cup of tea, a large cup of orange juice, porridge with yoghurt, and some fruit. Half way through I realised I didn't have dinner the night before, oops!
I braved public transport on Milton Rd to get into the city where I immediately walked past a Starbucks and had to go in.

For those of you unlucky enough to be Starbucks virgins: it's like a really really good version of Dome, but way more awesome :P
I had a tall special hot chocolate with cream on top :D

Starbucks is awesome :)
But enough about Starbucks.

After Starbucks I found myself on St Andrew's Rd, which is a main road in the centre of Cambridge. I walked around the city centre, had a look in some clothes shops, bought some fudge.

Yes, this is one slice of fudge, minus a bite that I had in the shop :D it tastes amazing, this one is plain vanilla.

I walked past St Catharine's College, where I will be staying from Sunday.

Looks gorgeous, can't wait to stay there :)
I had lunch at Giraffe cafe - I ate at their cafe near the London Eye in 2006 when my auntie first brought me to Europe. It's an incredible cafe; if their food were a genre it would be World! Hot dogs, enchiladas, burgers, coconut encrusted shrimp, nachos, fruit smoothies, hot fudge brownies with home made ice cream, heaps of different cocktails - yet another awesome brand that we don't have in Australia.

My delicious hot dog with chow chow onions, slaw and chips :D


Other photos from around Cambridge:

Everyone cycles here - the cyclists are fearless and hardly ever get run over :S

University of Cambridge Press book shop :D

Cardboard cut-outs of the Queen, and Prince William and Cate outside the Cambridge tourist centre, in case you want a photo with them :P

A huge medieval door.

Another huge medieval door with scary barbed wire over it.

My room at the Arbury Lodge:

Cute things on Arbury Rd

Cute signs, houses etc on Arbury Rd

The guest house that I'm staying at, very nice place :-)

From the plane

Photos from the day I set off, plus some on the planes on the journey here.

Flight no. 1 to Singapore - this is at Perth airport.

Flight no. 2 to Heathrow, London - this is somewhere over the Ukraine before dawn.

Breakfast on an airplane - ten points if you can guess what all items on the tray are :P

Dawn has broken - somewhere over Poland or Germany. At one point I could see lightning flashing inside the clouds below us.

Packing!

The day I started packing:

After several hours it became this:

The Jemima doll from Playschool is my mascot on this trip ;)

Day One - the travel

I am finally here. It took twenty-eight hours, but I am finally here!
My lovely grandparents saw me off at the airport at 3:30pm yesterday, along with my lovely boyfriend and his family :)
The first leg of the trip was a five hour flight from Perth to Singapore, which was quite easy to bear and the food was actually quite good. At Singapore airport I had a mishap on the monorail and accidentally rode it end to end twice :S (granted it only took five minutes to get from one end to the other). At 10:30pm I got on another plane (Perth and Singapore are on the same time) and it took thirteen long, arduous, ankle-swelling hours to arrive at Heathrow. We were served two meals on that flight, a dinner and a breakfast. The dinner was again quite delicious, but the breakfast was not terribly appetising - I'll post a photo later and you can tell me what you think it was ;) We arrived at Heathrow at 5:30am and were greeted by the longest queue in the world to get through the border. I kid you not: a basketball court-sized area with queue dividers over every inch of it, and people in line snaking through the whole room. It took over an hour just to get through the line, but once through it was fine. I was then reunited with my luggage and made my way to the Central Bus Station, where I bought a ticket for the coach to Cambridge leaving at 7:00am. The coach took 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the city centre, and from there I hopped in a taxi to the guest house where I'm staying for the next few days. The taxi driver was very helpful, and during the drive pointed out where I could hire a bicycle, buy groceries, get dinners and lunches etc. He also explained UK currency to me; apparently it looked like I didn't understand pounds and pence ;)
Now I am sitting in my hotel bed trying to stay awake until tonight: it's currently 12:00am, but for me it's 7:00pm! Also, I've had five hours sleep out of the last 48 - I do not respond well to losing sleep.
Given the length and complexity of this journey, and that I did it all on my own for the first time, I think it went very well. The only major inconvenience suffered so far has been my suitcase; when I picked it up from baggage reclaim I found that one of the wheels had broken off. Now when I need to wheel it anywhere half of it drags on the ground :( luggage fail.

~ Jemimah