(I’m now far enough behind that I’m compelled to note that this was the last Sunday in July.)

Had a decent night’s sleep, even though I woke up suddenly at 12:30 am for no apparent reason – this didn’t correspond to my EST clock in any particular way. But slept the rest of the night good, got up at a reasonable hour. Pilgrm, for all its charm, didn’t have in-room coffee, so I just had water while I read the internets. Got cleaned up, over to breakfast. A lot of the breakfasts were fancy and funky, like miso-soaked mushrooms with eggs. I just got the full English, minus the tomato. The default English breakfast has (to me, an American) a way-too-heavy meat to egg ratio. But it’s nice to get black pudding, something I don’t normally see.

I’d packed my backpack with just stuff I’d need for a quick day trip, so headed out after filling my water bottle at the spigots by the coffee bar. Easy tube ride to Liverpool Street Station. (It hadn’t been clear how to get from the subway part to the train part, but it’s obvious once you get there.) Used the machine to buy my ticket to Cambridge – lots of options and I bought what I thought was a round-trip ticket.

On the train, not too crowded, although I like a dummy had sat on the sunny side. Knitted, read.

Got to Cambridge. When I went through the gate, it took my ticket and didn’t give it back. Outraged, I told the attendant it was supposed to be a round trip ticket. He shrugged.

There was a tourist-greeter lady at a cart outside the train station who gave me a map and pointed out where the cheaper places to get punting tours were, very helpful. Then a fairly substantial walk into town. I don’t mind walking, but I don’t do well in sunlight (I’m a vampire!) and it was unrelentingly bright and cloudless. Found the shade when I could.

The closer I approached to the town center, the more crowded it got. Lots and lots of tour groups. By the time I was in the ‘middle’, it was a crush of people and all my alarms were going off. I’d hoped to book a tour, but I didn’t see where the ‘official’ tours booked and when I asked at an ‘unofficial’ one that was advertising heavily, they didn’t seem to know how to deal with one person alone, not a group.

I kept walking straight north to the river, thinking I’d book one of those cheaper punt tours. But when I got to the site where the ‘cheap one’ was, it was still the expensive rate. And they couldn’t fit me in until 4:00 anyway. And I was tired and not into it and just walked southeast through Jesus Park. (Is that what it’s called?) Found my way to a coffeeshop and had another toastie and iced coffee. Realized I just wasn’t up to really poking around in that weather, so headed back to the train station. No fear, I did see Cambridge, and it was very nice, but I didn’t actually go into any colleges or anything.

Train back. I decided, since it was a Sunday afternoon and people would probably be enjoying drinks, to go to the Kings Arms, the bear pub I’d been to on previous trips. Had to navigate lots of pedestrian traffic at Oxford Circus, but found the pub OK and joined the other bears in watching Olympic archery.

Found out that the Tottenham Court station was also close by, easy to get to, and put me on the Elizabeth line back to Paddington. At Paddington, I went into the train ticket place and asked for info about Oxford tickets for the next day. He was very helpful and funny.

“Do you want first class or economy?”

“What do I get in first class?

“Um… cup of tea?”

“And bigger seats probably… yeah, economy is fine.”

Also, I asked about the ticket kerfuffle and as near as we could figure out, the ticket machine probably printed me two tickets, but I wasn’t expecting that, so only took out one. I told him about, when you’re a tourist, you do everyone inefficiently and then when you’ve learned better, you never need that skill again. He was nice enough to listen.

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Then had quite a strange evening. After relaxing in my room for a while, my plan was to go to the hotel lounge, have some wine like the night before, then go get my passport pouch and go out to get dinner. Well… Sunday, lounge is closed. Lots of fun party music happening downstairs in the lobby, oh, is that where the drinks are? No, it’s just the receptionists enjoying themselves. OK, so… do I go next door to the pub? Went outside, saw this “Light Bites” place across the street, stopped to look at their menu. And they did the thing that I hate, because then I feel obligated, where the maitre’d or proprietor actually comes out of the restaurant and tries to lure you in. Well, so I went in. It was kind of halfway between a coffee shop and a restaurant, but I was like, OK, I’m here. Well, they were nice, and the food was OK, but the lady was super busy trying to take care of everyone and I didn’t actually get what I ordered or wanted, although what I got was OK. Urgh.

Still had a lot of evening left. Do I go back to the bear bar? What do I do? I went on a little walk around the neighborhood to look at some narrow parks, then just going to the pub next to the hotel, which was very nice, and having a cider while I read my Kindle. This was perfectly acceptable as a nice quiet evening before Oxford the next day.