On Sunday I found myself basking in a sunny afternoon, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn by men in top hats and tails. As you might guess, we were not in Dublin anymore. We were in Cambridge, England for the wedding of Sam and Zoe Jansen (Sam is a friend of Matt’s from Waikato Uni). It was a fun weekend, really great to be able to attend the wedding and to catch up with some Kiwis over here.
We arrived in Cambridge at lunchtime on Saturday and spent the afternoon walking around Cambridge and taking in the some of the local sights. Cambridge University is comprised of many individual Colleges scattered throughout the town. Many of the colleges have very old, grand buildings on grounds with carefully manicured gardens and lawns that you have to keep off. We walked through Saint Johns College and oohed and aahed at the stained glass, arched doorways and columns throughout (pictures in the gallery).
We stayed at the ‘Home from Home B & B’ in Cambridge which was a good, affordably-priced, place to stay. It was reasonably central and had nice rooms. Would recommend to anyone visiting Cambridge in the future.
We also enjoyed watching the punting on the river which seems to be a very popular pass time in Cambridge with tourists and locals. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to go punting ourselves but it looked like a lot of fun. With so many punts on the river most of the time is spent trying to navigate around others without knocking anyone in!
We spent Saturday evening catching up with other kiwis who had come over for the wedding. The wedding was on Sunday at Downing College. Sam and Zoe had a wonderful wedding, the ceremony was lovely, the bride looked beautiful, and the whole day was very special.
The ceremony was at 1:00, after which there was champagne and canapes in the garden and a spot of croquet for those who were keen. It turns out Croquet is not the genteel British game it appears on the surface! Yes, once the real rules of the game were established people seemed to take great glee in knocking everyone else off course and more or less forgot about getting themselves through the course 😛 All good fun really.
Later in the afternoon we moved inside again for the ‘Wedding breakfast’ or reception as we would call it in NZ. We were all spoiled with a full five course dinner which was followed by some entertaining speeches and then a live band and dancing into the night. Everyone had a great day.
On Monday we headed back from Cambridge to Stansted Airport for our flight. We got to Stansted with what should have been plenty of time but due to the huge lines going through security we literally had to run through the terminal to catch our flight. We made it, luckily but will know in future to allow a lot longer than the minimum time to check in!