day 2 and 3/4

yesterday was too tiring to warrant hunting down a computer access point to summarize the day. this one will be a little briefer (to read the whole story, with pics got to www.chumptastic.org). Rob and i decided not to go to brighton after all due to the weather warnings and the gale force winds in the south of england. i'm very glad that we didn't because the weather was nasty enough here and there were crazy power outages in the southern areas. not the day at the beach i was hoping for. instead we decided to explore london further outside while it was nice and inside if and when it turned nasty. the morning was full of pollen, buckingham palace, st. james' park, changing of guards (mounted and not), a variety of pomp and some circumstance. the afternoon was full of the national gallery...lots and lots and lots of paintings primarily jesus related and we only made it through 3/4 of the gallery...we are saving the 1800-1900 for a day when we aren't too tired to read. last night was rainy and very windy...in keeping with most of the day so we did a quick wander around soho and then grabbed dinner in ed's diner. it was delightful.
today was also pretty exciting. in advance of making travel plans we checked the weather and discovered that cambridge was the only one of our top four travel destinations not to have a shite forecast for the day. so cambridge it was! after leaving from king's cross station platform 11A, excitingly close to 9 3/4 (for all you harry potter fans), we traveled for less than an hour on a direct train to cambridge. shortly following our arrival in the town center it started to rain. we found a place to grab lunch and ate while most of the rain fell. we wandered through town and took a 2 hour walking tour. it was very fun and informative although the vast majority of it was spent learning about the importance of colleges in the university system and about king's college chapel, which by the way is breath-taking, a truly remarkable feat of engineering. we then had a quick walk about through trinity college, saw the wren library and various other features of architectural interest. we then wandered along the caius river, watching the punts and then just as the skies opened up we headed back to the train station. there was pouring rain and hail!! and we were pretty glad to be sitting in a nice warm train for the way home. the town of cambridge was so beautiful it was almost hard to understand it was a real place...everything was very picturesque with incredible detail and a combination of medieval, tudor and neoclassical architecture. this evening hold supper with andrea and rob and maybe a drink or two...i'll have to see how the energy level holds up.
thanks to all who have sent emails, i have got them but i may not respond right away depending on how much time i have left on my internet account.