Cambridge, England

In which I decide that Cambridge is the happiest of English cities, visit the stunning King's College Chapel, and list the top ten things I'll miss about England.

{Cambridge, England}

“Ticket, love?”

The ticket attendant catches me by surprise. I’m staring out the train window distractedly…probably looking for foxes. I’m always scanning the landscape looking for foxes when I’m riding the train in England. I have yet to see one, but it doesn’t stop me from looking. Anyway, it takes me all of twenty seconds or so to pull my Eurail pass up on my phone - but in the brief conversation that fills the ensuing space the attendant calls me not only “love”, but also “my lovely” and “my little poppet”. It makes me smile, and laugh a little bit to myself.

I’ve gotten used to being called “love” while I’ve been in England, and it seems people call perfect strangers “my lovely” more often than you would expect them to. But “my little poppet” is a new one.

I spend a lot of time on trains and buses while I’m in England, and I can’t help but notice a few differences between public transportation in the U.S. and public transportation in England. We’re not allowed to drink alcohol on public transportation in the U.S., for example. It never fails to surprise me when I’m sitting on a bus in the U.K. and someone next to me opens a cider or a beer. Or, as is the case with the older couple next to me on today’s train, a bottle of wine at 10:00 in the morning. As they joyfully drink wine from actual, real-glass wine glasses, they tell me that they’re celebrating their anniversary, and open a massive bag of potato chips.

(Crisps, they’re called here. And remind me to tell you someday about the variety of crisp flavors here in England. It’s simultaneously awe-inspiring and horrifying - unless lamb and mint crisps sound good to you. Or prawn cocktail crisps. Or wagyu beef crisps. Or roast beef and horseradish crisps. Any meat dish, it seems, can be turned into a crisp flavor. Whether they should be is, of course, another story - but since crisps and I generally don’t get along very well, I’ll leave it up to you to make that decision.)