The sun was shining last Saturday, and we took a short weekend trip to Cambridge. I don't know if it was simply because the sun was out and it was warm, but I loved Cambridge. It is a beautiful city with lots to see and do. We took advantage of the nice weather and hired bikes the moment we stepped off the train. We headed to the tourist office and booked a B&B for the night and then started off towards the B&B to leave our bags. This was a minor fiasco as the lady at the tourist office wrote the street address incorrectly - instead of 780 it was 80 .... Needless to say we went way, way out of our way. Ethan was not happy. We finally decided to call. Then we began the long ride back to nearly where we started. At this point, we were all hungry and Ethan was not a happy camper. After dropping our bags off, we headed for lunch at a great pub/cafe with an outdoor patio. After lunch, we decided to hire a punt ( a long flat boat - sort of like a canoe) to float down the river Cam. Ethan insisted we rent our own instead of doing the guided tour. It was lots of fun. William drove the punt, and Ethan and I assisted with a paddle as best we could. The river was quite crowded, and punting was pretty hard work for William since there were so many other punts to dodge.

The punting culture is sort of like preppy tubing culture. Most people drink wine and eat berries while punting instead of beer and chips and it is great fun to watch people punt and see if they fall in....luckily, we stayed dry. Here Ethan helps dad out.

The next day we headed towards a rural cycling route to a small town up the river for a picnic after stocking up at the farmer's market. We made it to the other town, but then it started pouring rain. We took shelter under an awning outside a pub and had our picnic there. Luckily the rest of the day was dry and beautiful, so we did not get too wet.

We stopped by the botanical gardens which were beautiful, and Ethan got to see and photograph some tropical rainforest plants for his school project.

Here we are outside of St. Johns College. One thing we did on this trip that was outstanding was to go hear the Kings College Choir sing evensong at Kings College Church.

Ethan is such a monkey! Here he is doing a headstand and then hanging from a tree.

Here are some shots of two weeks ago when we went to the London Aquarium and Ethan got some geckos painted on his cheek.