Plan This Fantastic Day in Cambridge with Teens, Cambridge, England

Dropping into a city for one day and getting a good feel for it is never easy and absolutely requires a little advanced research. We had a few clear ideas of what we wanted to see and do to make the most of our day trip To Cambridge from London on a recent vacation.

Our visit was driven by two things: We wanted to get a feel for Cambridge University as a possible college choice. And Teen Traveler wanted to follow in the footsteps of some of her favorite characters in a book that’s set in Cambridge.

Here are my best tips for getting the most out of your own day trip to this University town from London.

Cambridge University has more than 30 colleges. They are a bit like the houses at Hogwarts: your home base for three years, where you live, dine and socialize. All classes are university wide.

Several colleges have been around since the 1400s and some are only a few decades old. They each have their distinct character and culture and some wildly varied architecture that reflects when they were built. All the ones in the city center are the older ones and look like the Cambridge you see in tv shows and movies.

They don’t offer U.S-style college tours, so we booked a 90-minute walking tour for a general tourist audience that would be led by a Cambridge student or alumnus. It’s a good way to get an overview of the city and have the most historical colleges pointed out to you. We also got to hear a few of the more entertaining, and likely apocryphal, local legends about various campus landmarks. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).