Getting out of London (2/28: Cambridge, England)

Today I'm heading up to Cambridge to visit my cousin Swati and her husband Vikram, who's a "fellow" (professor) at Cambridge University. Due to some hot water issues at Christie's new place in London, I don't get out of the house until around noon. Take the tube from the West Hampstead station over to King's Cross, and at 1:15 hop on an express train to Cambridge, arriving around 3.

Drop of my stuff at Swati's place, and we head out for a tour of the colleges (Cambridge is made up of something like 30 VERY independent colleges), and then of the downtown area. Stopped in at a cell phone store to find out when the Nokia N95 is being released, and I was very excited to hear that the release date is April 2, the day after I leave. I'm glad for that because the phone will probably cost around $700 and will probably never be available in the US. I don't even want the temptation. Dropped into a wine shop, and discovered that Absinthe is now legal pretty much all over Europe. I'm going to have try that while I'm over here. Finally, stopped in a tea house called "Auntie's Tea Shop" for afternoon tea and scones. I'd heard of scones before, but I wasn't *exactly* certain of what they were. So when the waitress asked what kind of scone I wanted, I really had no idea what I was being asked. I took the safe route, and just ordered the "fruit" scone. This was probably the first time I felt like I was doing something very British.

After tea, we walked over to Vikram's office, met up with him, and then headed out for dinner. First to "The Granta", a pub near where they live, for a pint, and then over to a restaurant called "Rice Boat" for dinner. Since it was Vikram's birthday, and thus far the both of them had refused to let me pay for anything (tea, pints, etc.), I decided to be sneaky, and excused myself to go to the bathroom. Got the attention of a waiter, gave him my credit card and told him to just bring me the receipt for signing at the end -- don't even bring the bill. We had a really good south Indian dinner, where I got to have two of my favorite Indian dishes: dahi vada and masala dhosa (no idea if I spelled any of that right). Over dinner, I found out that each of the colleges has it's own wine cellars, where they purchase really good french wines before they are labeled (either in the barrels, or unlabeled bottles), store them for years, and make them available to the fellows for either their cost, or L10, whichever is lower. I don't really have any what the quality of the wines is, "really good" could mean pretty much anything, but Vikram is going to pick up 3 or 4 bottles for me, so that should be pretty cool. In general, had a really good time at dinner with them... Vikram got a professorship at UC Santa Barbara, so they were asking me lots of questions about getting things up and running in the US (utilities, credit cards, etc.), Swati teasing me about lots of different stuff, Vikram and I both teasing Swati about different stuff... good times all around. After dinner, headed back to their place, hung out a bit longer, then crashed around 11.

Hanging out with family is always good.