We had a lovely breakfast outdoors again on Mike and Maureen's patio. After breakfast we walked to the ticket booth for buses. Unfortunately, the computers were acting up and the line was enormous - and worse - not moving. We did find out from Mike and Maureen when the bus we wanted was going to leave Cambridge to Heathrow -so all was actually working well - even without tickets in hand.
From there we took a bus to the Botanical Gardens. There really are wonderful plants in beautiful gardens in that place. Every time I go to England, I come home ready to fix up my gardens. I then plant one or two new plants, and quit. There is a style I love, though, that I will try to emulate - tall plants to the center (or back), then middle sized plants, with short plants in the front. It really makes the garden look larger, and it allows you to see all the plants without crowding. They had a great room of Pitcher Plants from all around most of them from the Southern Part of the US.
We then walked to the Fitzwilliam Museum. There was an exhibition of paintings by a woman who specialized in ocean waves. She had waves throughout the year - summer, winter, and on. They were very interesting - a few were brilliant. We all had lunch at the museum, then Mike and Maureen went home, and Charlie and I trudged around town.
One of our goals was to exchange a 10 pound note that had gotten ripped in half. When we had first landed in London, we went to a ticket machine to buy bus tickets to Cambridge. We really had been up for hours at that point - that was our excuse - I'm not sure what the problem was with the ticket machine. It wouldn't accept our credit card. Then as we began feeding it bills, it would randomly reject a few. The first bill it rejected was the 10 pound note. Beyond rejection - it began to shove it out - then crumpled the portion still inside - then ripped it. We weren't sure we'd get both halves back - but it eventually released the crumpled bit. In Cambridge we stood for a bit in a Barkley's bank. The teller kindly taped the bill, then asked us if we had an account. We do have a Cambridge account at HSBC - but not Barkley's. He showed us the door. Eventually we found an HSBC and they eventually gave us a new bill. Could we have spent the taped bill???? Not clear.
We had remembered all the major pieces of Cambridge - just not how to get from one bit to another - so we bought another map.
That evening Mike and Maureen had some colleagues for dinner. Very nice meal - very nice day.
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