Cambridge is a short 45 minute train ride from London's Kings Cross Station (there is also a slower service taking about 1 hour that leaves from London Liverpool Street station). The station in Cambridge is an easy 20 minute walk from the city centre, or multiple buses will take you that way. Once in the centre, the area is very compact and walkable. Additionally most of the centre is pedestrianised, meaning that it is more direct to walk anyway. Most residents of the city ride bikes so watch out for them when crossing roads—or hire a bike and join them. A taxi rank can be found on St. Andrew's Street across from Christ's College and taxis can also be booked in advance, e.g. through Panther Taxis.
The colleges with the most photographed tourist sites charge a fee to enter. Well known college sites are the chapel in Kings College (from where the Christmas carol service is broadcast every Christmas Eve on BBC), Queens College Old Court and Mathematical bridge (supposedly the bridge didn't need any screws to hold it up until they tried to disassemble it and then couldn't figure out how to put it back together without them), Trinity College's Great Court and Wren Library (the library contains A. A. Milne's manuscripts of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, as well as Isaac Newton's first edition copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica) and St. Johns College has its own version of the Bridge of Sighs. A free way to see inside Kings Chapel is to attend an evensong service where you will also get to experience the music and atmosphere, however services may not be running until the university term begins on April 23rd.
Many other colleges allow you to wander around for free (although walking on the grass is not allowed) but check signs by the Porters' Lodge at the entrance to the college as sometimes they close to allow their students to study in peace. These more accessible colleges should not be overlooked as they, too, are very pretty (as we hope you will agree when you come to our wedding in Gonville & Caius College). Some of our other favourites include Pembroke College, Downing College and Emmanuel College (and Girton College, where I was an undergraduate, but when you see where it is on a map, or not as the case may be, I'm sure you'll decide not to visit it).
As you walk around Caius College, you should know that you are walking in the footsteps of some famous academics such as John Venn of diagrammatic fame, physicists James Chadwick who discovered the neutron and Max Born who developed quantum mechanics, William Harvey of blood circulation, Francis Crick of DNA structure, Edward Wilson of the failed South Pole expedition race, and current Fellow Stephen Hawking. More famous footsteps around town would include the botanic gardens where Darwin walked with his supervisor, Professor Henslow. Here you can see an avenue of old trees that embody divergent evolution or hot houses recreating jungle and desert.
Escape the city and enjoy the fresh air on a walk or cycle ride to the village of Grantchester through the meadows by the river (click here for a rough map). Once there, you may like to drink tea in the Orchard Tea Garden, relaxing in deck chairs amongst the apple trees. The area was made famous by a group of scholars, known as the Grantchester Group (e.g. E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein), who used to socialise there. Perhaps reading Brooke's poem The Old Vicarage will help set the scene for you (this house is currently occupied by Lord Jeffrey Archer, disgraced peer and novelist). An alternative would be a pub lunch or just a cool beer in a beer garden (that actually has grass and plants, as opposed to NY concrete) in the Green Man.
A second way to get to Grantchester would be to punt there, but I have never been a good enough punter to make it that far. A punt is a flat boat propelled by using a pole to push off the river bed. A good tip is that as well as using the pole to propel the vessel, also use it as a rudder to steer and make sure that you are standing at the "Cambridge end" of the boat (= standing on the flat surface at the rear). If you are less energetic, and more wary of falling in, punts can be hired with a guide who can also tell you some university history. Rather than the long punt to Grantchester, it is better to just hire a punt to dawdle up and down the backs (i.e. the backs of the colleges along the riverside). Punts can be hired from Scudamores which is located at the end of Mill Lane. If the weather is fine students like to buy beer from the nearby Mill pub, ask for it in a plastic cup and then take the pint to drink on the adjacent grassy area near the river, which is known as the mill pond.
The main museum in Cambridge is the Fitzwilliam Museum on Trumpington Street. The building is lovely, it's free to enter and has a large collection of armour, paintings, manuscripts and other antiquities. Other University museums, all free to enter and worth a look, are the Zoology museum (which has a huge whale skeleton hanging outside and many others inside), the Scott Polar museum (polar exploration exhibits), the Whipple Museum of Science (old scientific equipment) and the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science (rocks and fossils).
In addition to every college having its own chapel, the city has many noteworthy churches. The central city church is Great St Mary's in the market square (this is where our marriage will actually be recorded). The tower can be climbed for a good view over the city but be warned the stairs are narrow. There is also a very old church dating from the 12th century known as the Round Church.
The Grand Arcade is the central shopping centre housing most common high street shops and a large John Lewis department store. The building is fairly new and is a fine example of how new builds can be attractive and match the old sandstone styles. The Grafton Centre is the older shopping mall housing more shops. Nat would also like to point out the good bookstores you can find around town, including Waterstones, Heffers, Cambridge University Press and the second hand collection at G. David.
English dishes to try are as follows: a full english breakfast (bacon, sausage, egg, tomatoes, baked beans, toast and tea and more), fish and chips (wrapped up in paper as take-away), jacket potato with fillings (e.g. classic baked beans and cheese), roast dinner, shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, tea and scones, Cadbury's chocolate (all varieties), toast with marmite etc. Most of these dishes are served in pubs—good pubs around town include the Granta or the Anchor, both of which have nice river views, the Eagle (supposedly where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA), the Baron of Beef etc. England also has "local" pubs situated amongst houses rather than in the city centre—as Caius students we liked to go to the local Live and Let Live. In addition to good pub food all these places also have a good beer and ale selection.
Smaller cafes serving just breakfast/lunch/tea would include Tatties for jacket potatoes (nice shop on the Sussex Street passageway), Aunties Tea Shop for scones or all-day breakfast, Michaelhouse cafe (within Caius grounds, opposite the main entrance, perhaps good pre-wedding eats to keep you going). Larger establishments for dinner would include Bill's, Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant, the Varsity Restaurant, any curry house along Mill Road or the Saffron Brasserie on Hills road, Dojo's noodle bar, or the upmarket, book-in-advance Midsummer House.
In addition to pub culture (taken very seriously, as you can tell from this amazing map), which is mainly a sitting-down affair unlike NY bars, there are also some more bar-like places or clubs for dancing. Note that in all these places there is only bar service, so you can buy and sit at any table (you also do not need to tip the barman). Just to get everyone dancing in the same place, I will solely recommend Ballare nightclub but I don't vouch for it being good by any non-student-based outlook.
Cambridge Footlights theatre company may also have shows on. This group has produced many famous actors such as Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (Jeeves and Wooster etc.), John Cleese, John Oliver (Daily Show), Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) and Emma Thompson. You might see the next big star!
Late night food such as burger and chips or kebabs can be got from City Kebab on Regents Street or from the temporary stalls in Market Square.
If you want to use Cambridge as a hub for some day trips, I highly recommend taking the short 15 minute train ride through the flatlands of the Fens into Ely to view its impressive cathedral. Another classic English day trip would be to tour an old mansion of the gentry and walk around its expansive grounds, all perfectly maintained by the National Trust (overseas visitors can buy a 7-day touring pass for multiple properties or pay individually per visit). An example of this near Cambridge would be the nearby Wimpole Hall, but there are many other equally attractive properties dotted around the country, such as Churchill's Chartwell house, Chatsworth house, Osterley Park (15 min walk from a tube station, and the interior was used in The Dark Knight Rises) and Lyme Park, a.k.a Pemberley in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice.
There is a wide range of accommodation in Cambridge. Like the rest of the country Travelodge and Premier Inn are the cheaper, standard options but tend to be further out of the city—if you like walking/cycling/buses in the daytime this is fine but at the end of a long day you would probably want to consider a taxi. Other cheaper options would be bed and breakfasts, but there is nothing standard about these: you may get their nicest room, or you may get their smallest—it's hard to predict but you could be upbeat and say it's all part of an "English experience"! Other chain hotels have places in the city such as a Crowne Plaza, a Doubletree Inn, etc. There are also some new boutique hotels such as the Hotel Du Vin and the Varsity. For booking I would check reviews on Trip Advisor and this website seems to lists all non-hotel places to stay in Cambridge.
Written by Hannah
