wanderlust: Day 1: Paris (France) - London (UK) - Cambridge

13 Days UK map

After sleeping for only 4 hours, we woke up at 5 am to catch the 7.15 am Eurostar train. The sky was still dark when the Eurostar started its journey from Paris to London. It arrived 2.5 hour later at St Pancras station.

St Pancras
It is the new Eurostar station replacing Waterloo. The station is quite new and has quite a number of shops but we didn't have time to look around.

Eurostar

The platform

The interior

The building

From St Pancras we went out to exchange some pounds and walked across the road towards Kings Cross station. Once I settled down at the station with our luggage, he quickly dashed to the tube station and took a ride to pick up our railpasses.

I kept looking at the clock and the train timetable hoping that we could take the next train out to Cambridge in an hour's time. 3 minutes to departure time, I saw him running and we quickly ran to the platform and caught that train. He told me to quickly go up eventhough it was a first class cabin. And soon enough, the train started to move.

After I recovered from breathlessness, I started to walk towards the economy, but he asked me to stop. I told him we need to pay up if we get caught in the wrong class. And then he showed me our railpasses. They were FIRST CLASS tickets!! I really shocked when I saw it hehehe... After so much problem with the railpass, it was really a pleasant surprise. Christmas really came early this year. :)

Our first class cabin and nobody else. It felt so good..

Cambridge
It was a short 45 min to Cambridge. After alighting from train, we straight away went to a bicycle shop to leave our luggage. It was so expensive, GBP 4 (SGD 12) per luggage !! I could really felt the pinch now. We really didn't have any other choice, either leave the luggage here or drag along as we explored the city. I had also checked it earlier that mostly all the train stations do not have left luggage facility except for a few big ones like Kings Cross or Heathrow.

Once we settled everything, we took a bus to the city central. Cambridge is a very small but lovely city. The campus was at the perimeter of city central, each of its building looked so historical and was preserved so well. It was more like a historical city rather than a campus. So grand and so much character, there was even a river that ran through the campuses. I was in awe.

Christ College

Jesus College

A horse in Jesus College

Round Church

St John College
One of the bigger college in Cambridge. I could imagine how privilege it was to study here with all these surroundings.

St John from the side

A chapel

River Cam at The Backs - the back area of some colleges in Cambridge

Bridge of Sigh at St John

Similar to the one in Venice

Trinity College

Gonville & Caius College

How to read this clock?

A chapel

King's College

King's College chapel

St Catharine's College

Mathematical bridge at Queen's College
There is a myth saying that the wooden bridge was built without nuts and bolts.

Facts!!

Pembroke College

Fitzwilliam Museum

River Cam

Everything E&R

Random photos of Cambridge

Is it cherry blossom?

Resident apartments

Santa Claus is coming!!

We spent about three hours in Cambridge and then headed back to the train station to continue our journey to York. This time the train served complimentary refreshments and English tea for its First Class passengers.

York
Reached York around 4pm and it was already getting dark. After checking in we walked towards the city central to have dinner. We bought a take away of cod fish and chips. I just knew that fish and chips was originated from UK. When we ordered our food, we noticed that the York people had some accent, it sounded a bit like Cantonese to me, strange right? :P Sometimes I really couldn't understand what they said.