Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

I spent last Monday in Cambridge with Cara, home to the King’s College that everyone thinks we go to. Which is fine, really, considering that it looks like a lost Hogwarts set, especially when students stride fearlessly across the keep-off-the-grass quadrangle with their black robes billowing behind them.

Trinity College, built in Tudor times, was also impressive to look at. The chapel was littered with monuments to Tennyson, Newton, Wordsworth, Francis Bacon, etc, and had the shiniest floor I have ever seen. There was a maintenance man polishing door hinges while we were there, and I can only assume he pulled out the Pippi Longstocking roller-skate sponges as soon as the coast was clear.

Cambridge is as lovely as everyone says it is. We spent a fair chunk of time wandering through the market, along the river, and being harassed by punters. We couldn’t get into the vast majority of colleges – closed for exams, poor excuse – so we walked around behind the colleges instead. A lot of it looked just like Christchurch (but the Kiwi punters were nicer).

After lunch, we dropped into the Round Church (it was round) and learned many interesting things about Cambridge’s history. Nothing compared to what Oxford taught me about professors who quite literally ate anything, but we did learn that Nazism was caused by Europe’s departure from Christ, so that’s modern history sorted.

We then climbed Great St Mary’s church tower and got a great view into the colleges.

Afterwards, we walked to a park inexplicably called ‘Christ’s Pieces’ and got a bit lost, but we still made it back to the King’s College Chapel in time for Evensong.

Once the service had finished, we walked back along the riverbank and watched some guy play the ukulele from the top of his houseboat. After, we had just enough time to grab dinner at Cambridge’s prime potato-themed café – Tatties – before making our way back to the bus.

Cambridge < Oxford. There, I said it. The river and surrounding area are beautiful, but the architecture is simply not as startling. Still, it was a great day trip out of London and I’m totally coming back for one of these:

Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire

As a special post-exams treat, I caught a train into Great Missenden, the small village where Roald Dahl wrote some of his best stuff, including Matilda and Fantastic Mr Fox. It was a peaceful Tuesday morning, right up until the arrival of a horde of screaming school children. But before the horde, it was nice and quiet on the High Street, which was draped all over in Jubilee decorations.

As it wasn’t yet raining, I took my chances on a walk around town. I made my way past the local school and up a leafy lane just because it looked nice, and wound up at the local church. And then I stumbled upon Roald Dahl’s grave, which was kind of fantastic. There were heaps of really unusual mementos on his grave, including an onion, a tent peg and a 20p coin (someone splashed out). There are normally loads of chocolate bars left there, apparently, but someone must’ve got hungry. 

Can you spot the BFG's footprints?

I headed back into town and located the Roald Dahl Museum, which, of course, had been my primary objective in visiting Great Missenden. Despite being on the smallish side, it was much more satisfying than, say, the Jane Austen Museum in Bath.

The first room was Boy-themed, and contained heaps of anecdotal debris – private letters, Boy extracts scrawled on the walls with Quentin Blake pictures, a video of his sisters dishing the dirt (apparently he used to make one of them hold a cushion and shoot at her with his air rifle to see how deep the bullets penetrated), etc.

The second room was Going Solo-themed, and had lots of interesting information about his years as a pilot. He was so tall that, on his first flight, his head stuck out into the jet stream and he almost suffocated. There was a measure on the wall with character names at appropriate heights. I measure up at Mrs Twit, apparently. Brilliant.

There were also a couple of drawers full of disturbing throwbacks to his adult short stories, such as a collection of severed little fingers. Another drawer contained a shoe full of ice – Roald Dahl’s secret method of stretching too-tight shoes.

And then there was a replica of his writing shed, set up with all his clutter authentically placed. The clutter included photos of his family (normal), a massive ball of chocolate foil that he had amassed over the years (totally normal), one of his hipbones (not normal), and a bottle of his spinal scrapings (eek).

There was a whole room dedicated to his writing process, and his uncomfortable collaborations with just about everyone but Quentin Blake. Roald Dahl wasn’t a fan of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie; he felt that the Oompa Loompa song missed the whole moral point of his characters.

It was really worth the visit. On my way out, I grabbed a couple of brochures and took off on a bit of a hike through the woods, which were absolutely beautiful. In my opinion, Europe is particularly good for two things: forests and woods.

I found Grandma's bluebells!

I felt just like Beatrix Potter, Perfect Day playing in my head.

So it was with enthusiasm that I plunged into green isolation, spirits barely dampened by on-off rain and knee-deep mud. There were several points where charging through the mud was the best strategy, so I squish-jogged my way along until my feet were squelching too much to care.

I finally returned to civilisation – having only gotten lost once, score – and settled into the Café Twit, mainly to avoid the rain, but also to confront a cup of tea and a slice of blueberry cake.

When the rain took a break, I abandoned the café and hurried off to find Roald Dahl’s old house, where I failed to take photos because his wife still lives there and it felt wrong. And then onto the train, and homeward!

Matilda's library!!

Florence, Italy

As stated previously, our introduction to the Land of Pizza could have been better, but things improved as soon as we reached Florence. Firenze: home of the Renaissance and David and other artsy-fartsy things I knew nothing about.

We went for an evening stroll in search of wifi, and wound up by the Ponte Vecchio, which is like your average mediaeval bridge but stacked with buildings. It’s like your older brother stole all the strategic lego blocks and constructed a kick-ass shopping mall bridge while you were left with only enough blocks to build, I don’t know, the bridge that the troll lived under. It’s incredibly good-looking and was the only bridge to survive the World War II bombings.

Florence is the most fantastic clutter of domes and campaniles, marble and gelato shops. I won’t go through all the churches and museums we visited in Florence as it would take a million years and bore you to death. Instead, I’ll just say that Florence is the best-looking city I’ve ever been to. Beats Prague, Bruges and Paris. 

Most importantly, Florence is home to David (the naked guy with the muscles). There wasn’t just one David, either. He appeared all over place, with a fake outside the Ufizi gallery and another up at the Piazzale Michelangelo. It was Real David, however, who helped reunite me with my lovely Monash girls, Kathy and Niki.

It was a Hollywood moment. While queuing outside the Galleria dell’Academia (David’s house), I got a text from Niki saying that they lived opposite the museum. I replied with my location, and seconds later, a window opened overhead and I heard my name called from above. Kathy ran down and Mum took an embarrassing photo, and it was just about the most surreal moment ever. Very entertaining for the queue.

We arranged to meet up later, and then I returned to the parents and saw David in all his glory. His right hand is about three times the size of his left, but otherwise he was much more impressive than I’d imagined. Dad took an illicit photo from behind a pillar while I pretended not to know him.

We then looked in at the very famous Duomo, a big domed cathedral at the heart of the city, all green, pink and white marble. It's like the most structurally amazing wedding cake ever, and the photos do not do it justice.

I met up with the girls for dinner. We joined several other Monash-Prato students in a café near the Duomo. The food was meh but the company was lovely.

I saw Kathy and Niki again the next morning, taking advantage of the weeklong free museum entry; thank you, unexpected Culture Week! We crossed the Ponte Vecchio, climbed all the way up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, and took in the fabulous view out over the city.

Having dropped Niki home for her Orthodox Easter lunch, Kathy and I headed back out with a view to lunching on divine pear-and-cheese pasta. Highlight of my life. We then visited the Palazzo Piti, home to the Renaissance royalty Medici family.

While the rain held off, we wandered through the enormously expansive gardens, which seriously rivalled Versailles.

We climbed up and around and crept through hedge mazes and posed with statues and had a wonderful time until the rain started in again.

The actual palace was impressive in itself, showcasing a grand suite of Medici-style rooms, which again could have been lifted straight out of Versailles. When we finally reached saturation point, we left for Kathy’s house, only stopping for a cheeky waffle-and-gelato on the way. I met up with the parents for our own Easter dinner of traditional Italian pasta. Rather less fish than normal.

Tuesday and Wednesday involved a lot of hiking and city views. Dad and I visited the Uffizi where we saw Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, which didn’t impress me quite as much as expected. We joined Mum and took a bus up to a small town called Fiesole. Fiesole overlooks Florence from a nearby hill, and is the most picturesque Tuscan village imaginable. The Tuscan landscape looks like its been lifted from the background of the Mona Lisa, all narrow, tall cypress trees, vineyards and green hillside.

We took an epic uphill climb for some amazing views and were almost squashed between competing cars on the one-lane (pedestrian only) road.

We visited the local Roman ruins before embarking on our second and more epic ascent. Mel would have keeled over dead halfway. We finally reached a monastery perched up at the apex – San Francesco, visited and admired by Albert Camus – and spent a while catching our breath and the panoramic view of Florence.

It rained a lot on our last day in Florence. A lot. There was lightning, and even though every second building in the city is a church with a metal cross perched at the top, Dad was worried we might get electrocuted via umbrella spokes. We waited out the storm first in the Mercato Centrale (central market) and then in someone’s garage just off the road, until the doors started closing on us and I had to leap out like an umbrella-d Indiana Jones.

And that was Florence. You must go there.

Rome, Italy

We spent a total of four hours in Rome waiting for connecting trains. Our first visit was one of tragic defeat. It was raining. An umbrella-seller ripped us off and it was entirely my fault, though I tried to blame Mum at the time. We half-jogged down the streets in a bid to spot the Colosseum and failed entirely.

Instead, we found random bits of impressive building and decided to take consolation photos.

Our next visit was more successful. We got down to the Colosseum in fifteen minutes flat, which was only slightly infuriating after our complete fail the week before. And then we took triumphant photos.

It was dark, and the Colosseum lights were spectacular, reflecting off the bellies of passing birds. So worth it.  

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen: city of ice cream, churros and bakeries. Like London has Prets, Copenhagen has bakeries. So many bakeries. All full of Danish pastries, which, hilariously enough, I hadn’t realised originated in Denmark.

Like Stockholm, Copenhagen was cold and grey and mainly built in ice cream pastels. The loveliest of these pastel-coloured houses lined a little harbour street called Nyhavn, where we hopped on a canal tour.

First stop was the Little Mermaid statue, which is nestled up against a dock. She's even more of a tart than Ariel.

The surrounding area was appropriately reminiscent of a magic kingdom, with a canal twisting around a castle in the shape of a star.

The canal tour then took us under a series of low bridges and back to the start, from whence we walked down to the palace where Queen Margrethe lives. Pretty flash. This is where you’d expect a Disney princess to live; forget Buckingham (‘Ugly’) Palace. We managed to arrive right in time for the changing of the guard, which was fairly amusing. One of the guards had a fit of the giggles mid-march.

Kiss! Kiss! No, but seriously, look at those tassels.

Voltaire considered Denmark one of the most liberal countries in the world, did you know? Apparently it was way ahead of the pack in terms of freedom of the press. Another interesting fact is that Denmark was occupied by the Nazis during WWII, something I hadn’t realised. And the Danish kings have been named Frederick or Christian since the 1600s. I learnt all this and more at the Danish History Museum, which was, importantly, free.

On Wednesday, we took on the Prince of Denmark at his famous castle, Kronborg. Who else but Hamlet? Shakespeare based his play in a castle town called Helsingor (Elsinore in the English text). The castle’s within spitting distance of Sweden and is basically there to keep the Swedes at bay. No two countries have been at war for as many cumulative years as Sweden and Denmark.

Kenneth Branagh, eat your platinum blond heart out.

The history of Kronborg was really interesting. Basically, it was built as a naval fortress so the king could keep an eye on Sweden while taxing the life out of any ship that sailed in the sound between the countries. This tax basically paid for every castle, monument and shiny thing in Denmark. It’s unclear whether Shakespeare ever actually visited Helsingor, but the castle was getting quite a rep as a party palace in the early 1600s, hence providing the perfect location for a crazy fictional prince.

I suppose I can see what Princess Mary saw in it.

We took a tour of the casemeet – the underground dungeon – during which Mum got left behind in the dark. Silly Mum. Earlier, we’d lost Dad somewhere in the Maritime Museum. What am I meant to do with these parents?

On our last full day in Copenhagen, we failed to break the habit of walking billions of kilometres. Among other things, we climbed the biggest and shiniest spiral tower you can possibly imagine, and each confronted imminent death atop the tilted viewing platform. The floor sloped downwards to flimsy wooden vertiginous effect.

Mel, you would have loved it.

Admittedly, the views were fairly all right, Copenhagen being a beautiful fairytale city and all. There were pastel colours and onion domes and oxygenated copper as far as the eye could see. Which was far.

Once we’d stumbled back to ground level, Mum promptly led us at an adventurous pace through the local drug den. No, really. I have never seen so many pre-teens lighting up a joint. Not even on Skins. That’ll teach Mum to lead us to off-map places.

But the mini-adventures weren’t quite over, as Dad insisted that we find the sea. The sea was not as close as he’d imagined. The sea was actually a good train and metro ride away, and we spent a grand total of ten minutes on the cold grey beach staring (or grumbling, in Dad’s case) at the cold grey windmills before heading back to town for delicious Vietnamese curry.

Mum decided to test the water temperature. Her fingers sued for negligence. 

Stockholm, Sweden

On the 5^th of April, Stockholm was cold, grey and quite empty due to the mass Easter exodus. It also turned out to be an archipelago – a bunch of islands all banding together to create the Swedish capital. Just imagine the bookshelf section of IKEA, where the shelves are buildings, and the buildings are yellow, white and red-brown, and there’s a river dividing the aisles.

It’s almost but not quite entirely unlike that.

 We spent a large part of our time exploring the Old Town, Gamla Stan, weaving in and around its cobbled streets and off-kilter buildings. The Old Town contained Sweden’s narrowest street, which contained a steady stream of posing tourists. See Figure 1.

A good quarter of the population may have left for the holidays, but Stockholm was full to bursting with two things: dogs and brightly coloured Easter feathers.

A greater part of the dog population could be found strolling along the riverbank, which reminded me strongly of Queenstown in New Zealand. There were even little black bobbing ducks! I made the mistake of trying to feed a couple, only to have the entire Swedish bird population fly at my face.

It snowed. Keep in mind that it was April, or ‘Spring’ as some Northern Hemisphere inhabitants like to call it. It snowed. Our clear view of the Old Town was blizzarded away, but the parents got very excited and insisted on braving out the weather. We followed some distant Moria-style drumming all the way up to the local castle, where we found the changing of the guard in full swing.

Mum and I then engaged a random gentleman as a tour guide and discovered some interesting Stockholm facts. For example: the colour of the buildings reflects the century in which they were built. Also, the castle was burnt to the ground in the seventeenth century when a couple of guards left a fire unattended.

Due to our utter lack of Swedish, restaurant menus were a great source of excitement. On one momentous occasion, I shoved a large scroll of bacon whole into my mouth (as I don’t much like bacon) only to find that it was not bacon at all. It was herring. Pickled herring. And it didn’t taste like bacon.

Easter Eve was wonderful. We spent the morning on a cruise around the archipelago, managing five minutes on deck before the frostbite set in. The scenery was beyond spectacular.

The day got even better in the afternoon, which we spent in Skansen, an outdoor museum of Swedish culture with a Nordic zoo!

I finally realised my lifelong dream of meeting a moose – or 'elk', to be European about it. We also saw grey wolves, brown bears, enormous eagle owls, otters, reindeer, lynx and wolverines. Most impressive of all was the indoor display of – wait for it – tabby cats.

For dinner – Swedish meatballs! (No more herring for me.) Delivered by a rather nice-looking Swedish waiter. Hayley, you were very right. You know what I’m talking about.

Easter Sunday began with victory, when I smashed Dad’s egg with my hard-boiled egg. I smashed it all over the table. It turned out to be soft-boiled, you see. The other breakfasting guests were entertained.

It was the brightest and warmest day yet, at a balmy four degrees. We spent the morning trekking through the Old Town to get to the island opposite our hotel. Dad was on a mission: to climb the random hill. We eventually got there and were rewarded with a panoramic view of Stockholm, all blue and yellow like the Swedish flag. It’s like someone’s fetched their Derwent pencils and coloured all the buildings in nursery colours.

And then Mum picked up a frozen puddle, and Dad asked the fiftieth set of strangers for a family photo, and we trundled off back down to the main city. Where we immediately found more steps to climb: another Dad-mission.

We indulged in Viking history – they didn’t actually wear those horned helmets for the vast majority of the time; disappointing – and more meatballs, and that was the end of our Stockholm visit.