Dream Vacation - Day 21

Today I say goodbye to Daniel and his family in Doncaster and head to Cambridge but first I had several stops to make before I get there. My first stop was in Sheffield to visit my friend Phil. Phil is a Guild fan and like with Daniel I have never met him, seen him or talked to him over the phone/skype. He and I have communicate only through texting, chat rooms and twitter.

I picked him up just outside city center and we drove into Sheffield. We parked and then walked around the city for an hour. We also got some lunch in the city and I tried Beef & Ale Pie for the first time, it was really good.

After hanging with Phil I stopped by the city of Nottingham as I wanted to go to Nottingham Castle. After parking and getting lost for over an hour I finally found the Castle. It cost me about 6 pounds to get in. Nottingham Castle is located in a commanding position on a natural promontory known as "Castle Rock", with cliffs 130 feet high to the south and west. Besides the beautiful grounds the main building is a museum and art gallery. It houses most of the City of Nottingham's fine and decorative art collections, galleries on the history and archaeology of Nottingham and the surrounding areas, and the regimental museum of the Sherwood Foresters. 

I spent a few hours checking out the grounds and museum before heading to Raunds to pick up my buddy Matt, again this is the first time that we'd be meeting in person. He was joining Erlend and I in Cambridge for my visit. 

When I got to his house his mom was outside so I got to met her as well, a very sweet lady. We packed his stuff into my car and we were on our way to Cambridge. While heading there we got a text from Erlend asking if I could pick him up from work, which is just outside of the city. 

Erlend is the one friend that I have met before, we met up at San Diego Comic Con a few years back. So Matt and I picked him up at a pub near his job and headed to his place just outside city center of Cambridge. Erlend place is very nice and even has a guest room with two twin beds so both Matt and I had a place to sleep. 

Once at Erlends we settled in and decided to order some dinner. We got fish and chips and wow did we get some chips.. three giant boxes of them. While we ate we watched Captain America, we plan to see Captain America: The Winter Solider in the next day or so and Matt had not seen the first movie yet... so it was a must watch.

After the movie we played one of Erlend's game but it was new game to me. It's called Kraker Laken Poker. Despite the name, Kakerlakenpoker has nothing to do with poker – except that the game is all about bluffing, and it's such a fun game. I'll have to pick up a copy of it when I get back to the states. 

We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out.. it was a low key kind of night as I knew I'd be doing lots of sightseeing tomorrow and the next day.