After living in Cambridge, MA, for some 18 years we’ve finally made it to the real Cambridge, the one after which our long-time home was named. It was a quick two-night stop, just enough to drink in some of the ambience of an ancient university town. Ancient and lovely, I should add. On arrival we wandered around parts of the University somewhat randomly and found some gorgeous parks and lawns belonging to the colleges that were open to the public. It was really beautiful.

The main reason to come here, of course, was to see the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1209 by students fleeing the anger of locals towards the students at Oxford – an early version of town-gown hostilities – it is one of the great universities of the world, known particularly for its scientific excellence. Stephen Hawking, Watson & Crick of DNA fame, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing – they all studied here. Oh, and a guy named John Harvard, whose 1638 deathbed bequest to a then two-year-old college in Massachusetts so delighted the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they named the school after him. They even decided that the village across the river from Boston where the college was formed, then known as New Towne, was renamed Cambridge in honor of his alma mater.

Thus the link between our old home and this original Cambridge is formed. One fun little fact we learned on our tour of the University was the origin of the name Cambridge itself. The city, you see, sits on the River Cam. And when a bridge was first built across the river the then-small settlement became known as Cam Bridge. Or something like that, of course, in olde English. At any rate, that’s what one of our tour guides told us, and it makes sense.

Though we are typically not tour people, we actually took two tours on our one full day in Cambridge, one a 90-minute walking tour of the University and the other a 45-minute boat tour up and back on the River Cam. The walking tour was great. Led by Annie, who had recently finished her Master’s Degree in Linguistics there, she explained all we wanted to know about the history and structure of the University. I had been confused by the structure of a university with 31 colleges and how they relate but now that’s been cleared up. In capsule form, the University handles academics while the Colleges handle student life. Simple enough.

The river tour was less informative but wonderfully relaxing. Basically there are hundreds of “punts” – small, flat-bottomed boats with square-cut bows – that are poled along the shallow river. Here in Cambridge they travel essentially behind many of the Colleges, giving you a view of the architecture and lawns you can’t see otherwise unless you’re a student here.

Beyond the tours and the immediate university vicinity, the parks and walks along the River Cam were really great. Bucolic, quiet, green – everything you would want, and the foot paths go on for miles. And on the weekend at least you’d see kids swimming, canoeing, fishing, all very relaxing.

Oh, and some good food, too. Steaks one night, Turkish another, and a spectacular Indian place (Dishoom) that was so good we had lunch there both days. There are a couple Dishoom restaurants in other parts of Great Britain where we’ll be stopping and we already have them marked. Now northward to Lincoln!

Our first stop outside the capital was a two-night stay in Canterbury, an easy one-hour train ride from London’s St. Pancras station. This ambitious stay also included a day trip to Dover to hike along its famous White Cliffs.

Canterbury is a lovely town that is packed with English history. Its soaring cathedral is the spiritual center of the Anglican Church. Its walls have witnessed 1,400 years of tumult, including the infamous murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170. Becket’s grave then drew centuries of pilgrims until Henry VIII’s war on Catholicism led to its destruction.

This is also the setting for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, perhaps the first masterpiece of modern English literature. Characters and themes from these stories appear in shop and restaurant names everywhere in this picturesque town.

As the most popular tourist spot in Southeastern England, Canterbury is bustling with energy, yet you are always just steps from calming riverside parks. The Great Stour is a river that breaks into a couple little branches in town on its way to the North Sea. They feel more like creeks, lined with pretty parks and colorful gardens.

Another quick hop on the train took us 30 minutes to Dover, the gateway to the European mainland, just 20 miles across the English Channel from Calais, France. As such, the place is loaded up with fortifications, going back to Roman times. Towering over the town and the huge port is the massive medieval Dover Castle, considered by some to be England’s largest castle.

After spending part of the morning touring the castle we grabbed a quick lunch and set off to explore the White Cliffs that stretch for miles from the bustling harbor. The weather bounced around from warm and lovely to cold and rainy, adding its own drama to the singular beauty of the place.

We packed an awful lot into this two-night stop. From here we’ll head pretty much straight north through Eastern England, making stops in Cambridge, Lincoln, and York, before heading into Scotland. Let’s hope our stay in Cambridge is a tad more relaxing than this one!

And so we’re off on a nine-week saunter around England, Scotland, and Wales. Fully 26 two- and three-night stops – and London is the only one of them I’ve ever been to. (Mark’s been to a few, but certainly not most of them…) Basically we’ve just never given Great Britain its due, in no small part because we’re not that excited by British food, but there’s so much of our history embedded here it’s time to dig deep. And we enjoyed last year’s trip through France so much that we figured repeating it (albeit without the French food) had to be good.

First stop, easiest to fly into, is London. What’s odd is how little I know my way around the city but I’m starting to solve that. We were here just this last February and it’s really starting to grow on me. That’s in part because I really liked where we stayed – not just the hotel (Claridge’s, one of the city’s grand dame hotels), but right in the middle of Mayfair, a really beautiful neighborhood (neighbourhood??). Obviously, the city has it all: beautiful parks, good restaurants, great museums, and really good theater, and with all the bustle a New Yorker would expect.

Speaking of restaurants, one of our favorites in Greenwich Village is a place called Dante – great food and some of the best cocktails in Manhattan. Just a couple weeks ago Mark got a marketing email from Dante announcing that for the month of July only they were going to take over the kitchen and bar at Claridge’s – the very hotel where we already had a reservation. So our first night we had dinner with our old friend Luba at a place that felt more than a little like home.

One of the attractions for spending all of July and August is that the weather should be way cooler than in Manhattan, but you wouldn’t have known that the day we arrived. We fly in and by the time we get to the hotel the temperature is in the upper-80s, heading up to the low-90s by mid-afternoon. Just brutally hot for being a tourist. The good news is that the weather started to moderate by late afternoon and the second day was mostly cool and slightly rainy. Day three though was perfect, mostly sunny and low 70s. We’re hoping for a lot of that over the next two months.

We spent a bit of time in parks and had a nice morning in the Tate Modern, an art museum opened 25 years ago by our friend Lars. The highlight though was three shows in just two days. First up was This Bitter Earth, a two-man show directed by Billy Porter, a Broadway legend who we briefly met here last February. If the West End is the equivalent of Broadway, this was essentially off-Broadway. It wouldn’t have been on our radar except that friends from New York are producers on the show. A good show, it’s easy to see it coming to New York though probably too “small” a show for Broadway. But a nice introduction to off-West End theater.

The next day we had tickets to a matinee performance of a new production of Evita. Now that was amazing – a huge, star-studded performance where you just sit in awe of the performances, production, music, choreography and all that. Especially the choreography. You can be certain that show will come to Broadway. And then that night we went to a new musical, For One Night Only, a “jukebox” musical about the production of Live Aid, the massive concert to raise money for the Ethiopian famine 40 years ago. The music was good, sometimes great, and the story was … OK. But you can forgive a lot if you have fun ’80s music.

Now it’s off to new experiences around the country. We head southeast to Canterbury to start before working our way counterclockwise up into Scotland, then back down through Wales and ultimately down to Cornwall in the far southwest. Should be a great nine weeks!