2015.07.31 – Edinburgh (Scotland) – York (England)

We woke up early this morning and took the tram back into the city center. The tram had fewer passengers at 8:30am than yesterday at 10:30am. In town, we stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast and a washroom break. We only needed to walk a short distance to the train station. We quickly understood the reason that our train fare was much cheaper, we had boarded a cross country train. The train was full and we struggled for awhile to store our luggage. Upon our arrival at York, we walked over to the conveniently located Travelodge hotel. As we had only been able to book a two single bed room, I had planned to sleep on our camping mattress which we had brought along with us. As we arrived a few hours before check-in, we left our luggage at the hotel reception and headed out to explore this new city. We bought some sandwiches and ate them at a nearby park. Afterwards, we climbed up the city wall and walked along it. We made our way back to the hotel where Victoria took the back door to enter the hotel. Jenny managed to a large clothes wash. We took full advantage of our room’s portable fan to dry our clothes over night. In the early evening, we dropped by an Italian restaurant for supper – Prezzo. Later, we explored the The Shambles streets and got to see the Minster.

2015.08.01 – York (England)

After a slow morning wake-up, we headed to another Whetherspoon Pub for breakfast. The place was really popular. Later, we walked to the nearby Castle museum where we spent a few hours there. As we left the museum, it started to rain. We took refuge, as many others, at the Whetherspoon Pub. We had two pints of beer while waiting for the rain to subside. Once the rain had tapered down, we pursued our walk up on other parts of the city wall. We had to interrupt our walk and return to our hotel because of the rain. By the time, the rain had stopped, it was too late to visit the Minster. In the early evening, we dropped by a restaurant for some fish and chips. We attempted to visit another section of the city wall but the gates appeared locked. We slowly made our way back to the hotel after a brief detour to the train station to pick up tomorrow train tickets.

2015.08.02 – York – Cambridge (England)

This morning we purchased a few croissant/pastries from the local Sansburry store. We left our hotel and walked to the train station. After noting our train platform (5b), we awaited for our 10:58am train. At 10:56am, a train showed up at our platform and, as usual, Jenny was eager to board. We hopped onto coach “F” in search of our reserved seats but we started to notice something was strange. Some of our seat numbers did not even exist. After a few inquiries, we realized that we had hopped on the wrong train. On the advise of the staff on-board, we got off at the Leeds train station and explained to the platform staff that we had hoped on the Cross Country train which had been running late as opposed to our scheduled train. After filling some paperwork, we got our tickets more or less validated. We had two more train connections to take to reach Cambridge. With some luck, we managed to get to Cambridge with only an hourly delay. We took a taxi to the Travelodge NewMarket. While Jenny did more clothes washing, I did more travel planning. We booked a two hour walking tour for tomorrow. In the early evening, we went to the nearby Wrestler’s Pub and had some very good Thai food with a beer.

2015.08.03 – Cambridge (England)

We started our lazy morning with our hotel’s buffet breakfast. A good offering while there were few folks when we showed up. We walked over to the city center in 20 mins. We noticed quite a few more bicycles on the road. The first museum we attempted to visit was unfortunately closed on Mondays. Not deterred, we continued our walk along the streets and pedestrian walkways. The area started to overflow with tourists – many of them Asians. We kept on being offered a punting tour on a kind of a flat bottom gondola on the Cam river. We visited our first outdoor equipment store encountered on this trip. Jenny bought some additional calcium supplements as she used up her supplies from home. We showed up at the tourist office for our 1:00pm walking tour. John, our guide, offered us a very informative tour. Although initially we perceived the walking tour as rather expensive, we realized along the way that it included an 8 GBP entrance fee to the King’s College chapel. In the end the walking tour was a very good deal. Later, we stopped along the way for some expensive gelato. Victoria purchased her long awaited official Cambridge hoodie. We took a rest at a Starbucks located in a nice shopping mall. We had an early supper at Nando’s – a Portuguese inspired BBQ chicken. We walked back to our hotel for a good night rest.

2015.08.04 – Cambridge – Oxford (England)

We woke up at 8:00am and had our buffet breakfast at the hotel. We took a taxi to the train station for a short train hop to London’s King Cross station. There we took the Tube to the Paddington station where our next train departed from. We had literately no wait for our train to Oxford. After arriving at the Oxford train station, we took the S3 bus just outside the station. The bus brought us to the PearTree Park and Ride area where our Travelodge hotel was located. We missed our bus stop as the driver forgot to inform us. We caught a bus in the other direction and finally made our way to the hotel. The establishment looked very different from other Travelodge hotels as it had a wooden construction and staffs were not particularly friendly. As it was still fairly early afternoon, we opted to visit the Blenheim Palace a few miles further north from our location. Back on the S3 bus with our 24h pass, we stopped at the Palace’s front gate. After walking 10 mins beyond the gate, we entered the actual Palace and joined a free tour. The Palace was very beautiful and well maintained – home of the Duke of Malborough. We strolled around the gardens and extensive grounds. Later, we took the bus back to the town center for our evening meal. At our restaurant, we learned that many foreign students came to Oxford during the summer months to follow English as a Second Language Courses. We certainly noticed that many of them did not appear bothered by the price of any menu and drink items.

2015.08.05 – Oxford (England)

Given our hotel did not offer any breakfast, we headed back into the town center for breakfast by boarding the 300 bus line from the PearTree Park and Ride. We had breakfast at the very popular Brown’s cafe in the covered market. We strolled the streets for a bit and climbed up St-Mary’s church tower before joining our 2:00pm walking tour. Although, we had forgotten to copy our e-tickets onto our Kindle, our guide had our names registered for the tour. Once again, the guide offered us a tons of information on the town of Oxford and some insights into the universities operations. After the tour, we had some sandwiches in a church park (i.e. in front of tombstones!). We visited again a Primark store for some clothes items for me. We only had 45 mins before the store closed. Jenny and Victoria managed to sell me on a new dress shirt but I had no luck for pants. We walked up to the train station to pick-up our tickets for tomorrow’s train. We had supper at Las Iguanas where we had some happy hour cocktails and five plates of tapas. It rained heavily during our meal at the restaurant. As we looked to return to our hotel, we took again the 300 bus line. Unfortunately we boarded the bus going in the opposite direction. Jenny enjoyed the longer ride back at our hotel.