First Days

Well, I was trying to include a picture of our first meal at Casa David, some cold pork pie, salad, and some home made apple pie to finish it off, but the blogger code on my phone will not attach a picture.

It's been that way since my road trip and at this point, I don't think they will fix it.  Kind of a shame as that is where the pics are easy to get at.

So we flew out at 5:30 pm on Tuesday and arrived about 10 am on the 13th.  David popped for a limo to get us from Heathrow to Cambridge (this is not normal practice and there are conditions, I've agreed to buy the beer!).

What's to say about that?  The Virgin Atlantic seats are the narrowest that I've ever sat in.  We popped a couple of bucks to get exit row, where there was infinite leg room.  Ok, not quite, as at full extension I was getting bumped by folks waiting for the loo.

The food was reasonable and I was able to sleep a bit.  Pro Tip: I was using my tablet to blue tooth stream an audio book to my headphones - it was an old science-fi book that I've read a number of times, so if I fell asleep in the middle of things, I could pick up without a problem.  The reader, while not a pro, was good enough.   BTW, the blue tooth head phones are one of my favourite purchases.  Work great as phones, and blog ambient noise pretty well.  Mine have a pause button which the book player will recognise.

We did a little walking around yesterday after the flight.  Today we managed to sleep in a bit.  Got up about 8, liesurely breakfast of mixed musli, then off to David's golf club to look around and to decide on which driver and putter to use on Sunday.  There was some walking about with 11 clubs and no bag for a time, but we only got warned off once.

There is a shag range at his club, so we hit some short irons.  Then rented some balls for driver try outs.  The one I liked was David's current stick, so it was off limits.  But I chose a Calloway from a few years ago and it seemed to be fine.

We had lunch at the club, some fish and chips and a pint of a light, citricy ale.  Went down pretty good.  The fries were good and the fish reasonable.  We met the captain of the club.  Reminded me of the P. G. Wodehouse stories.

Back from that and David and Sue were a bit tuckered as they are fighting some colds they picked up in Scotland last week, so Barb and I took a bus into Cambridge.

The bus was nicely located and took us to the middle of town and the Grand Arcade.  We got UK sim cards put in our phones, so we have local numbers.  Cost was £15, which gets more than we need for data, text and phone.

My phone was purchased unlocked.  Barb's is an older iPhone and AT&T would unlock it since it was more than 2 years old.  There were some tense moments getting her's up, but when the smoke cleared (ah, there wasn't any real smoke, but it sure would have made the blog post funner), all was well.

We found an ATM and got some of the local currency.  It looks like there is a daily limit for these complex over seas transactions, so if you are going to do this, you might to see what they are.

We dressed for cool and wet and every hour we got 10 minutes of that.  Being at the Arcade, we were sweating up a storm, so we dropped into the local coffee bar for a cool libation.  Have you ever heard of Starbucks?  They are everywhere.

We promised Sue some berries and off to Spence and Marks we went.  Got hit some more cool rain, found the store, wrong S&M and off down the road to the other one.  Mixed English Berries were at hand and our task was complete.

We wandered about a bit and found Immanuel College to be open.  Wandered in, asked the porter if we could try the croquet on the college lawn.  It seems that just not done, so we just wandered and took some pictures.

David and Sue were not napping when we got back and house smelled heavenly of boiled gammon, potatoes and veggies.  That with a pre-dinner Stella and a bottle wine with the meal left me feeling a bit more tired than I might have been.  It could have been the jet lag...

Tomorrow we are in to the city early.  We will meet Holly, one of David's children, see some art and then hit a local pub for lunch.  Post that there are plans too, but I should save that for the next post.

All is going well.  David and Sue are wonderful hosts and it's a great pleasure to hang out with them.