Genius and Us: The Bicycle City

Hello, family! Depending on how tired Katie and I are in the middle of our journey home next weekend, this may be the last time you hear from us! It's been a fun journey for us, and we're sad to have it winding down. We've got plenty to do this last week though, so there won't be too much time for sorrow.

As ever, we had a busy week. After our bike trip last Saturday, we decided we loved having bikes so much that we just kept them until the end of the program. It's been nice, because Cambridge is an extremely bike-oriented city. In fact, the students aren't even allowed to own cars. When you ride a bike here, you feel like a king - when you ring your bell in a mass of pedestrians, it's sort of like Moses parting the red sea. It's sort of interesting, because pedestrians are the lowest rung of the food chain here, as opposed to Provo, where cars will stop for you when you're on the sidewalk just thinking of crossing.

Yesterday Katie and I took a trip to London on our own, and had some fun adventures... As some of you may know, we're both fans of the British sci-fi series Doctor Who, which starred David Tennant and Catherine Tate a few years ago (while not so well known in the US, they're kind of a big deal over here). This summer, they've been starring in Much Ado about Nothing as Benedick and Beatrice. The tickets sold out pretty quickly, and they've been going for 150 + pounds on eBay, but the theatre saves 20 tickets for each performance and holds a lottery for them at the beginning of every day. If you win the lottery, you can buy a pretty good seat for 10 pounds, which isn't bad at all. So we got to London in the morning, sat in line for the lottery for a while, and to make a long story short, we got a ticket! Well, Katie did, but I was able to buy a standing ticket a little later. So that night we got to see the play, which was a lot of fun. Katie is going to be giddy "for the rest of [her] life".

Other highlights of London were the national gallery (saw some Van Gogh and Monet paintings...), the portrait gallery, Herrods (I touched a $10,000 jacket...), and the Borough Market, which is like a super-intense farmer's market where they were selling things like Ostrich eggs and truffle-infused honey. The weather was mostly nice, but we got a few sprinkles in the middle of the day.

We had another formal hall earlier this week, this time at Pembroke college. Since the dining hall is under refurbishment for the summer, they had us eat in the old library, which was actually pretty cool.

Well, I'll drop some pictures down below. We're excited to talk with you all about our experiences in a week! Thanks for sharing the fun with us.

--Jordan