They Didn't Say It'd Be Easy

Ah, the weekend.

Full of hope, optimism, and adventure.

That’s what we expected anyway as we embarked on our adventure to Cambridge for the day and night.

What we experience was far from what we had anticipated, unfortunately.

It started off as a lovely Saturday morning, I think the birds were singing (we’ll just say they were to add emphasis). Nothing was going to bring me down, I was ready to explore the U.K.’s version of a “college town”. We headed to King’s Cross station, home of Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter.

The line was too long to wait for a picture with the sign, so we all decided to come back a different day when we weren’t in a rush to catch a train.

Our train boarded around 11:14 a.m. and then we were off to Cambridge! We arrived within 45 minutes and we were all bustling with excitement. We had booked a hotel for the night so when we got off the train our first mission was to get to the hotel to put our bags down.

It turned out that where we were staying wasn’t on the bus route and seeing as we were all getting frazzled with the situation, our kind bus driver dropped us off at the hotel’s (which was actually a Bed and Breakfast lol) entrance, since there was no one else on the bus (NOTE* this bus driver’s kindness, it is the only warm gesture we received the whole trip).

Once we had arrived at our hotel/B&B, we went to reception to get our room keys. Turns out, we were staying at a B&B attached to a Raptor Conservatory, how romantic. Birds sqwaking is the background, we headed into the reception building (which had a powerful smell of bird) and notified the worker that we had a reservation. She pulled up our information and gave us our room key and we were on our way (she was actually very snippy but I’m disregarding that for now).

We all got situated and got ready for the rest of the day/night because we would not be coming back until later.

We were back in Cambridge (our hotel was 30 minutes outside of town) and booked ourselves a punting tour. If you are unfamiliar with what a punting tour is, it’s basically like being in a gondola and a tour guide takes you around the river and points out cool stuff. Punting is all the rage in Cambridge.

Our tour was at 5, so we explored a bit and ate before arriving at King’s College, where the tour would start.

The tour was ran by Cambridge students/alumni (they told us to review the tour on Trip Advisor… Brits love their Trip Advisor reviews), and they directed us to where the boats/punts were, which was at a dock attached to a pub called The Granta.

We arrived at the pub at 5:03 and our tour had already taken off, but we were assured there would be another that we could catch and he told us to get comfortable and have a drink.

Enjoying each other’s company and some cider (hard cider) (I love hard cider :) ), we waited for our tour guide to board us into the punt.

A student at Somewhere University (it wasn’t Cambridge or anywhere rememberable) with long blonde hair (he was a guy from South Africa) was the tour guide for our punting experience. He told us everything there was to know about the colleges in Cambridge. The river that we punted on flows past 31 colleges! Some famous ones are Trinity College (where Stephen Hawking went to school), King’s College and Cambridge (I’m assuming, not entirely sure).

Pictured above is actually the bridge that Stephen Hawking first kissed and proposed to his wife on!

Also on the tour, we passed by the Mathematical Bridge, that is made out of straight pieces of wood. It is rumored to have been built by Sir Isaac Newton, but that is not true, it was actually constructed and designed by one of his students.

Following our tour we ventured out to find some food. We all agreed on this Italian place called Zizzi’s (it’s like I’m studying abroad in Italy, not England.. that’s what my calorie intake is telling me anyway). We enjoyed a filling meal, that I didn’t have to choke down and that I recognized the ingredients of.

It was getting to that time where the nightlife was starting to be happenin’, and we were excited to experience what Cambridge was like when the sun goes down. Looking back on it now, I don’t know why.

For starters we went to this cocktail looking lounge place. They carded us (which is no big deal, but I hope by now I look like I’m 18), but we all successfully got a drink- despite the whispers of people questioning if we were older than 15……..

Once people hear our accents, we usually get a lot of attention because we are either perceived as wealthy or stupid. Older men give you attention (don’t worry dad, I always have my knee ready), women roll their eyes at you, people whisper.. it’s basically routine now. We were getting all of these actions from multiple groups of people at this bar so we decided to dip and head to the Irish pub that was blasting Stacy’s mom earlier (Can’t you tell we’re such 90′s kids and obviously older than 15?).

It was karaoke night at the Irish pub so we thought we’d mingle a little and then sing a song before we left. When we were ready to sing our song, we approached the karaoke host and he informed us that he would not be letting us sing (note that this was 11:30 p.m. and no where near closing time). When we asked why, he gave some B.S. excuse about how we were acting like we owned the place and then made an announcement on his microphone that “rich little girls can’t expect special treatment” or something like that. The whole situation was very confusing and we all just agreed to head on to the next pub.

The next pub ended up being a night club and we thought that there may be more people our age (15) there. We were wrong. It was a bunch of adults dressed like they were 15 (if 15 year older wore Mickey Mouse ears made of glow sticks and had tutus on). The club was very bizarre and I was sending out an SOS and trying to find the quickest way home possible. This process was only sped up when a bartender would not serve us. It all started because my friend asked for an extra lemon while I was ordering out drinks and the bartender was not too fond of her request (She was all like an extra lemon??? Who do you think you are??? Is that how they do it in America??? Lol not really but it seemed that way). She then told all the other bartenders not to serve us, so it made for an awkward rest of the night. My friend, Hayley, complained to the manager, who then gave us free drink vouchers. Hayley went back to the bar to use them *cue in all bartenders ignoring us*.. so then our friend Claire ordered for us because the bartenders weren’t associated her with us. When claire went to give her the voucher and we grabbed out drinks, the bartender denied the vouchers and took out drinks back. Well alrighty then. Hayley complained a little more and got more free stuff, I didn’t really care about any of that at that point, I just wanted to get back to the hotel.

We found a cab outside of the club and convinced him to give us a cheaper ride than he was willing to give because we said we knew of other places that would charge us less. He claimed to have known where he was going, but when we got out of the city and into the wild bird land, he was clueless. I wish teleportation was a thing because at that point I was fed up with the world and wanted to be back in America where customer service and hospitality actually matter.

The cab driver eventually found his way, tried to charge us more, but accepted our lower payment and we were finally back in the hotel room. The hotel room had basically no service and little wifi (not the biggest problem, but after a night like that I just wanted to check out life back home). I fell asleep homesick and somewhat sad. The next morning I couldn’t get back to Regent’s any quicker.

Our professor, Jeff, had told us that we would experience an “OMG” moment when we would question “why am I here?” and that we would be homesick and get a little sad… I thought if I didn’t feel this way the first week then I wouldn’t feel it at all, but I was wrong.

No one said that 7 weeks away from home would be easy, but I guess you never anticipate the hard times either. Although I am feeling better back at Regent’s, I don’t understand why common courtesy is so hard to come by here. I know that it’s not everywhere, but it makes things frustrating when you come across it. I can’t count how many times we have asked for directions or which platform our train will be on or where a local suggests we should eat (today we got KFC as a suggestion), and we get a cold shoulder or an “I don’t know”.

As always, I’m staying optimistic. It’s only been two weeks, and there is so much more to explore and nicer people to meet in these next 5 weeks. I’m only here for so long, so I have to make every second count!

To cheer ourselves up, Hayley and I went back to Big Ben (mostly to take my Father’s Day picture with the sign I made which keeps uploading blurry on Facebook) and ended up walking around the London Eye and the pier there. We decided to watch a movie tonight and to get ready for the long week of interning ahead of us.

This weekend we learned:

-we look 15

-not everyone is going to be as nice as you want them to

-don’t stay over night when going on a day trip

-Brits thinks Americans really like KFC

-things will always get better

And I know week 3 will be better.