A few months ago, HP Inc. acquired a new company based in Cambridge, England. This acquisition directly affected Zach's job and he, as an HR Business Partner, has had to work closely with the new company to help welcome them into HP. We soon found out that Zach would need to travel to Cambridge in the next few months. Well, me being the crazy Anglophile I am, I just could not pass up the opportunity to travel with Zach to the UK and make a fun trip out of it! And thanks to my wonderful parents, we were able to enjoy a wondrous kid free weekend.
Zach flew out on Saturday, November 2nd and started working in Cambridge on Monday. I decided to fly out a few days later on Tuesday so that my parents wouldn't have to watch the kids for too long. I arrived in London on Wednesday morning and took a bus from the airport up to Cambridge. It was absolutely the perfect time of year to travel to England. The whole bus ride I was just looking out the window and taking in the beautiful fall scenery. The leaves were so vibrant and the little towns we traveled through were just so quintessentially British. I was in heaven.
The bus stop in Cambridge was about 20 minutes from our hotel and I crazily decided to walk there instead of calling a cab. I think I just got it into my head that it would be fun to walk around and really experience the city. Well, I definitely did get a feel for the college town that it is, but dragging my suitcase across cobblestone is not something I want to experience again.
Zach met me at the hotel to give me our room key and then he headed back to work, which was just across the street. I took a shower, got settled, and took a long nap. Jet lag is no joke! Zach came back a few hours later and we went out to dinner with one of his co-workers who was also visiting from the States.
Zach was able to take the rest of the week off from work so the next morning we woke up bright and early and walked to the old part of town to take a punting tour through the university. A punt is what they call a boat similar to a gondola. I had read online that it was the best way to see most of Cambridge very quickly, which was perfect since we didn't have a ton of time to explore there.
Our tour guide was a young guy straight out of sixth form, which is the British equivalent to our high school. But he had lived in Cambridge all his life and he really knew his stuff about the university. We had a punt to ourselves since it was so cold and it was really fun to ride around and learn about the architecture and all the history that has happened in that place.
After our tour, we took an Uber back to the hotel, got some lunch, and then grabbed our bags. We then headed back to the bus stop and waited for our bus to take us back to London. Unfortunately, our bus was about 30 minutes late so we were stuck standing out in the freezing cold and wind for quite a while until it finally came.
We finally arrived at our hotel in London around 5:00 pm. We went up to our room and got all settled before going out to explore the area near our hotel and to get some dinner. The location of our hotel was awesome because we were right down the road from Paddington Station. We had fun exploring the large train station and all the shops around it. I couldn't help buying a Paddington Bear for each of our kids while we were there!
After dinner we headed back to our hotel for an early night since we planned to start our days bright and early.
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