Last day in Cambridge, Norwich

8/20/2013:  S got up at 5:30 AM yest, so as to be fully packed & breakfasted in time to walk to the tire place as it opened.  They had to consult w/ Hertz.  S talked w/ them, then walked back to the hotel, found my missing sandals and we checked out, leaving our luggage at the desk & set off for Cambridge center.

Trinity College unfortunately closed to visitors (some special event), but we went to St. John’s (nice Elizabethan court; chapel Victorian w/ pretty covered bridge across the Cam) & Pembroke (Christopher Wren’s Chapel – his first architectural work – he was nephew to the Master of the college).  S slightly crabby as we looked for a lunch place—and the Italian place we wound up in was noisy, which he didn’t like – but we survived and went off to the Antiquities Museum after lunch, which turned out to be all casts.

S calling the tire place at intervals all day – the tire for our car (an Audi A-1, not as fancy as it sounds having hard to find tires & the tire having to be sent from their supplier).  We went to the garage, the van arrived w/ our tire, and then there was another wait for Hertz to furnish an authorization #, and finally our car was usable.

We set off for Norwich (pronounced Norridge), arriving around 7 at The Old Rectory, had a nice dinner & I had a lot of wine.  We tumbled into bed & slept like logs.

VG breakfast, took bus to center of town, spent AM in the Norman keep restored into a museum, lunch at the museum café – good soup but poor approximation of a Greek salad – S v. taken by a v. tiny seal from a Saxon queen that showed her having sex w/ her husband on the obverse (not very graphic—it was v. tiny and rough, but S noted her mouth was open & her hair standing out behind her).

We set off for Elm Hill (cobbled, medieval street) and the cathedral, which was lovely – Norman columns, 15^th century lierne-vaulted ceiling and kids all over – several sets of volunteers working w/ them to make dreamcatchers and the like.

Down near the bottom of one statue was a dedication to a RAF airman who died at 22 in the Solomon Islands.  There was a reredos that survived the Civil Wars as a plumber’s workbench (? I don’t know where I heard that & can’t find it now in a guidebook).  

S walks slower than he used to and his left foot drags a little.  His left hand shakes more.

We had cream tea at a 15^th century coffeehouse, in a v. pretty garden on the roof, then S went back to the museum and I wondered around, ending up in a small, undistinguished flint-faced church (St. John Timberhill) that was 500 years old.

Tomorrow, said S, we bike.  I’m nervous because although I’d meant to practice at home, I didn’t.