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Tag Archives: vacation

Ian’s Birthday and Liz’s Visit

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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birthdays, England, pub crawl, pubs, The Eagle, travel, vacation

Ian had an birthday a few weeks ago.  In the interest of making his big day A Big Day, I hounded him for months about how he wanted to celebrate, without ever getting a straight answer or actually making any plans.  And then a friend of ours from college came (relatively) last minute, and Ian came up with the perfect fete: we did a cross-Cambridge pub crawl on Friday and a fair on Parker’s Piece on Saturday, with a trip to Grantchester and Audley End thrown in for good measure (about which more later).

Anyone wishing to imitate our awesome pub crawl is welcome to our itinerary:

– Fort St. George for Pimm’s
– The Old Spring for drinks & dinner
– Champion of the Thames for scampi fries and after-dinner drinks
– The Eagle, because its famous (its the place where the discovery of DNA was announced AND the place where RAF troops hung out during WWII – there’s still their graffiti all over the back room
– detour through the city centre, to laugh at all the scantily-clad townies waiting in line for the awful bars
– the Free Press
– The Tram Depot, because its open late

We didn’t go to the Kingston Arms or the Cambridge Blue because we were drunk and tired, but those would have been next on the agenda:

The next day, we went zorbing – which has been on my to-do list for a little while.  It’s basically exactly what it looks like: you get in giant plastic balls and run/jump around for a few minutes.  It’s like having a movable bouncy castle.  Its awesome.  As expected, though, it gets pretty clammy in there pretty quickly.
 

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Planners in Amsterdam

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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adventure, Amsterdam, Europe, travel, vacation

image

Today:
– Museum of Amsterdam
– Oude Kerke (old church)
– Red Light District
– Jordaan
– pickled herring sandwiches
– grocery store
– speculoos spread (like peanut butter but worse for you)
– coffee and bike watching

…and some other stuff. This place is heaven for an urban planner, and I’m here with a friend from grad school so we can nerd out together. We may have stopped to admire the municipal composting stations.

Thank you, RSPB!

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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birds, birdwatching, cycling, England, exercise, My Friend Lisa, nature, RSPB, travel, UK, vacation

My friend Lisa and I had been planning a big day out to go birdwatching for at least a couple months now, and we almost cancelled it because of the threat of bad weather (I peer-pressured her into it).  So on Sunday morning, we met at the Cambridge Rail Station, loaded up her panniers, and hopped a train to King’s Lynn.  From there, we cycled about 20 miles to the Titchwell Nature Reserve, where I was in nerd heaven for the next four-and-change hours.

I was nervous about the cycle, because Lisa is a Serious Athlete and I’m, well, kind of a goof (but I’m getting really good at zumba class!).  She also looked genuinely appalled when she realised that my bike is way too good for the likes of me (fair enough).  But with Lisa carrying my binoculars and lunch, riding a commuter bike, and leading the way for most of the journey, we more or less kept a similar pace.  The only times I got nervous were the downhills, because with my Fat Kid Advantage I would go screaming down the hills and overtake her really quickly, and I would either have to take the wrong side of the road or hit the brakes repeatedly.

Still, we made it there and back in one piece.  It was my first real birding experience in Britain, which was great, because almost everything I saw, I was seeing for the first time.  We saw an avocet about five minutes after we walked it, and I am obsessed with avocets, so my day was made more or less from the moment we arrived.

Titchwell Marsh is a series of marshes – freshwater, saltwater, sea – with hides arranged around the perimeter.  Yesterday it was jam-packed full of Serious Birders with spotting scopes and some truly impressive cameras.  Lisa and I were also there, bringing down the average age by a decade or two.  I got so into it – at one point Lisa was really cold and ready to go get a cup of tea and I said “but look at that bird! and that one! and that one!” – she was probably ready to kill me.  But seriously.  It was amazing.

The rain started about 8 seconds before we got back on our bikes to cycle to King’s Lynn.  I got a flat tire half a mile from the train station, and then we shivered out of our wettest clothes and had a cup of tea before sprinting to the station and huddling for warmth on the train back to Cambridge.  We looked through the book as the train moved south, though, and both of us were shocked to realise how many birds we’d actually seen.  Some birds – Canada goose, swan, mallard – were not so exciting.  Others were things I’ve been wanting to see for years – avocets, a pectoral sandpiper, a lapwing, and (this was the biggest surprise) three Eurasian Spoonbills.

I like shorebirds because they’re super cute, and also usually easy to spot, unlike warblers or small birds that perch high in trees.  But we had a phenomenally successful birdwatching outing, even if the trip back was a struggle.  I cannot thank Lisa enough for figuring out the route and the train schedule, carrying my stuff in her panniers across 20 miles of surprisingly rolling countryside (it wasn’t mountainous, or anything, but flatter would have been better, at least on the way back…), and being excited about birds in the first place.  Freezing train ride aside, I had a really great day.

 

Ridgeway Walk/My Friend Lauren’s Birthday Celebration

14 Friday Sep 2012

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archaeology, Avebury, birthday celebration, Chalk Downs, England, holiday, My Friend Lauren, photography, Ridgeway Walk, vacation, Wiltshire

The Ridgeway Walk is an 87-mile trail across Southern England that begins at Avebury, a modest but very cool version of Stonehenge (or at least, a different set of giant stones in an even giant-er circle)  For My Friend Lauren’s birthday, we did 24 miles of the walk, beginning in Avebury, over two days.  It was a larger chunk of the walk than we thought we were doing  (day 1 was 11 miles instead of 6.6…oops) but the walk was beautiful.

The Ridgeway Walk is very cool for a few reasons:

1. Its beautiful

2. Avebury, which is pretty famous

3. Hill forts! We walked through three hill forts and a burial site in two days

4. White Horse Hill, Uffington, a prehistoric sculpture of a horse wherein the land has been scraped away to reveal the chalk below. It’s awesome:

Image courtesy the-history-girls.blogspot.com

Of course when you’re standing next to the horse, you can’t really tell what it is, and its at the top of a hill, so you can’t really see it from below…but you can get a sense of the scale, which is very large.  Apparently if you stand in the eye of a white horse (there are several scattered across Wiltshire), its supposed to make you fertile.  My Friend Lauren said that and then followed it with “Don’t even think about it!”

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, friends.

Southwold Seaside

12 Wednesday Sep 2012

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beach huts, holiday, My Friend Jaime, photography, Southwold, travel, vacation

Southwold was both very typical and very idiosyncratic.  It was a purpose-built Victorian seaside town, and in that respect it was pretty similar to a lot of other seaside towns around Britain.  I was particularly charmed by the rows of beachfront changing cabins, but those are kind of iconic and certainly not unique to Southwold; if anything, I think they’re more often associated with the South coast, where the weather is warmer.

The thing that was totally specific to Southwold was the arcade.  There was a room at one end of the pier that resembled any old arcade: screaming children, screaming machines, epilepsy-inducing flashing lights.  That is not the arcade I’m talking about.  Further down the pier, there is a single room of homemade arcade games.  Actually, “games” might be overstating it – in one, you put a strand of hair in a small petri dish and then watch while it does a “DNA analysis” (for example, it confirms that you’re human, then gives you the likelihood that you’ll eat toast on the morning of 11 June 2038, and then says in 2142, its 98% sure you’ll be dead.  Spot on, I’d say).

Another game involves inflatable rubber gloves “patting you down” – Jaime tried that one.

The hands-down favorite was a really rickety looking photo booth – The Expressive Photo Booth, it was called (see below). The whole thing was made out of plywood. We sat down and moments later, the seat started rocking back and forth.  That was when the machine took the first photo.  Then there was a bright light.  Then a long pause.  Then the seat dropped out from under us (I screamed).  And a few moments later, we got our photo (top right) and I yelled “Let’s do it again!”

I would’ve kept going, too, but I don’t think Jaime was as into it as I was.

You can read more about Southwold’s special somethings, which include a brewery, a new housing development and a water clock, at my other blog.

 

Southwold

10 Monday Sep 2012

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holiday, My Friend Jaime, Southwold, summer, Typical British Seaside Holiday, UK, vacation

I’ve written about Tibby’s Triangle, an award-winning housing development in Southwold, on my other blog, (see upper-right corner of collage) but I also wanted to tell you about the rest of the town, which is utterly charming.  The beach is lined with those quintessentially British seaside huts, which apparently cost obscene amounts of money. There is a giant pier with a famous sculpture, a famous arcade, and some schlock.  I was absolutely charmed by the whole place.

It was wonderful to be there with another urban planner – Jaime and I camped a few miles away, and then had the better part of a day to spend in town.  We walked up and down the main drag, got a sub-par latte in a hilariously awful cafe, visited the Adnam’s shop (we meant to do the brewery tour, but we ran out of day); hung out in a playground and toured the housing development referenced above; went to the pier; took lots of photos; went swimming, and called it a day.

I had originally intended to take Jaime to Lavenham, a really sweet Suffolk town that I’ve mentioned on the blog before, but as we hopped back in the car, I turned to Jaime and gave her the options: we could go look at Lavenham – walk around the main drag of a very cute little town – OR we could race back to Cambridge with plenty of time to hit up the Waitrose on Trumpington Road, the yuppie supermarket that I’d never gone to because of my car-free situation.

Jaime intuited that I really, really wanted to hit up the yuppie grocery, and so that’s what we did.  For the results of the shopping trip, see below.

St. David’s, the UK’s Smallest City

03 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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Tags

cream tea, holidays, St. David's, vacation, Wales

St. David’s is technically a city, because it has a cathedral (a stunning cathedral, in fact).  But it is a very small city, full of tourist schlock, ice cream vendors and cream tea peddlers (not to hate on ice cream or cream tea).  We spent a happy afternoon there, although I think I got the most excited about the bougie deli with loads of local beer and cider and snacks.  There was also a restaurant called Cwtch.  That’s pronounced “cootch.” That was pretty funny, as was the polite notice on the espresso bar bicycle (see below).

Cotswalds Adventure

12 Sunday Aug 2012

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Cotswalds, England, Oxford, travel, UK, vacation, village

There were all sorts of wonderful things about heading to Oxford for the weekend, but the best part was reconnecting with my friends Beth and Julian, who I met when I studied abroad, and whom I haven’t seen since.  Its a funny thing to rediscover adolescent friends as adults – we were so close when we were 20, but who’s to say what 8 years of separation will do to a friendship? A small part of me was concerned that we would sit in awkward silence for the duration of our visit.

Thankfully, that small part of me was wrong.  Beth and Jules were the perfect hosts, cooking up a storm all weekend and taking us on a scenic tour of their ridiculously cute village in the Cotswalds, an easy train ride from Oxford.  The pictures really don’t do their village justice – it was full of perfect cottages and picturesque open spaces.  We went for a walk around the village, I climbed a tree and Beth and I goofed around on some playground equipment (I love playgrounds, which I realise makes me super creepy), and then we sat in their back garden enjoying a rare bit of sun before catching a train back to Cambridge.

Wales!

30 Monday Jul 2012

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friends, Pembrokeshire Coast Path, travel, vacation, Wales

The last couple weeks have been dedicated to having All The Fun: Oxford, the Cotswalds, Ireland, and now Wales. I’m racking up an impressive number of photos and am lucky to have blog collaborators/partners in crime (beyond my stoic, long-suffering husband) to do things like march 12 miles along the Welsh coast. The photo below is about 10 miles in, during our banana break.  Its all just nauseatingly beautiful.

Realistically, I will probably not post until we get home this weekend.  Try not to miss me too much, and know that I’ll be back with all sorts of good posts in August.

Israel!

23 Monday Jul 2012

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Dead Sea, holiday, Israel, photography, travel, vacation

Because I’m lazy, I had this idea that I would post some of my favoritest favorite photos of the last year.  I’ve certainly taken enough pictures since leaving Other Cambridge. So I started looking at the best ones, and I realised all the photos I haven’t shared with the internet already are photos I’d taken in Israel last November. The ones here are all from our two days in the Dead Sea.  We went hiking in Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, bobbed up and down in the water (which is actually 1/3 suspended solids, fyi), got up early to watch the sunrise, and chased mountain goats around the hostel.  And worried a lot about food. There was no food there – I ended up getting most of my meals at the beach snack bar, but by “meals” I mean “tuna sandwiches” because in order to be kosher, they put a crapload of sandwiches in plastic wrap on Friday morning and called it a day.  It was run by a very friendly white guy with dreadlocks, though, whom we got to know pretty well over the course of the two days.  His English was way better than my Hebrew (I can say: yes, no, please don’t put it in a bag, and some swear words).

The absence of food at one of the most famous tourist destinations was mind-boggling.  But even so, Jaime and I made the most of the weekend.  Ein Gedi was a real highlight, with beautiful hikes and empty trails after the first flat mile.  We met other travelers at our hostel and chatted with them until late at night, and I saw 12 new species of birds.  We went to a kibbutz with a botanic garden (for two urban planners, one of whom used to be a landscape architect, this was Nerd Paradise) and went for walks in places with big signs that said “DO NOT GO HIKING HERE” – because of sinkholes from the shrinking of the Dead Sea.  The places that used to be underwater are still saturated in places and can form quicksand or just totally give way.  There is no local consensus about how likely that actually is to happen (I mean, clearly it does happen but how likely it is to happen to me was what I could never glean), which made me nervous – but I did live to tell the tale.  Jaime, the girl with whom I got into all these antics, is coming to visit next month.  I’m not sure what in England will measure up to dodging sinkholes in the Dead Sea, but I’m going to have to come up with something.

Ian and I had some adventures this weekend, so I’m looking forward to sharing our night at King’s College and our weekend in Oxford as soon as I can get off my bum long enough to find my camera.  Right now its a whole 2 rooms away.

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