Across the Channel

I had been meaning to take a trip to the UK since we arrived in Paris last August, but I had somehow not managed to fit it in.  I finally pulled the trigger a few days ago and took the Eurostar to London.  There were a number of items on the agenda, including visiting Cambridge, where I was a graduate student about 37 (!) years ago and where my sister's partner lives part of the year while working at his biotech start-up, seeing a friend from those graduate student days, Julian, who is now a professor at the University of Plymouth, and generally just enjoying London.

I arrived at St. Pancras late Sunday morning and had a few hours to kill before my train out of Paddington to Plymouth later that afternoon.  I did what I often do when I have a few hours to kill in London:  visit the British Museum.  I had seen (multiple times) the big-name artifacts that the museum is famous for--Elgin Marbles, Rosetta Stone, Lewis Chess Set, etc.--so I decided to just wander without aim from room to room and stop when something caught my eye.

Consistent with my aimless wandering, I can't tell you which rooms these pieces were in or what their historical or artistic or cultural significance is.  I just thought they were visually interesting.  

The British Museum is really a pretty nice place to spend a few aimless hours.  I was then off to Plymouth to see Julian.  I arrived in the evening, and we walked around the harbor and saw parts of the coastline.  It is rough and wild and beautiful, not unlike the Brittany Coast.  (Not surprising, given that a narrow channel separates them.)  Plymouth was badly damaged in WWII, so there are many newer buildings in evidence and not so much from its rich history as a major port dating to before the Industrial Revolution.  Julian took me to the steps from which the Pilgrims most definitely did not embark but that were undoubtedly close to the place where they probably embarked.  We had a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant close to the water. 

The next morning we headed to the moors.  It was enormously windy, but I enjoyed experiencing the force of nature trying to lift me off of my feet and the rugged beauty of the windswept landscape.  (Photo credit to Julian for the one below.)

After a tremendously lovely time seeing Plymouth and catching up with Julian, I headed back to London, and then onto Cambridge.  There I met Shannon, Derek, and my nephew Jack.  We received a tour of Derek's biotech company (in which I was an early and very small investor), walked into town to see the outdoor market that I frequented when I was a student, and did a little bit of shopping.  We had two spectacular dinners while I was there, one Italian and one seafood.  I was reminded how much fine (or even decent) dining has come along since my student days in Cambridge.  I did not make it out to Churchill College on this visit, but I enjoyed the walk down memory lane nonetheless.  

After what seemed like a very short visit, we headed back to London on Wednesday morning to catch a mid-day Eurostar back to Paris.  And since train travel seemed to be the overarching theme of this trip--probably about 14 hours in six legs over four days--I will finish off this post with a few photos I took from train windows over those four days.