Punting

 Saturday we went to Cambridge--us and about a million other people. The city was just to the point of being overwhelming for me at this stage of the trip. We wanted to do the punting, since that is the quintessential Cambridge activity, plus, it's the only way to see the backs of the colleges. ( A punt, in case you don't know, is a lot like a gondolier. Maneuvering it is harder than it looks, evidenced by the number of amateurs who were all over the place, turning the river into an afternoon of bumper-punts.) We had the good sense to NOT try it ourselves and paid for a "chauffered" boat along with two young English couples, 26-28 years old, who were quite prepared! They popped the Prosecco and Coronas just as the boat started to move. It was great fun, but the punt jams were nonstop to the point that you had to give up trying to hear the tour guide and go with the moment of laughing at the silly folks trying to maneuver these boats on their own, feeling quite safe with our competent punter, even if we couldn't understand a word of what he was trying to tell us.Other than the punting, we really didn't give the city its due. It was just too much at this point.