Jeremy was spot-on British. A shaggy tuft of gray hairs sat atop a long face coated by red cheeks. His speech, foppish, with its "sort ofs" and "rights," made us smile when we first heard it. He dressed for the weather in plaid and green wool, with a scarf that filled in exposed spaces. There was no doubt we were in England.

The walking tour of Cambridge began with bits of history as we marched along to Kings College. He slipped the tour group around the line of common tourists waiting to gain entry, and we stared around as soon as we got inside.

The chapel's stonework was delicate -- every stone was carved to tell a story -- and only made the wood carving stand out more. The awning ceilings called out for a stare too -- could one DO that with stone? On to Trinity College. It looked just like Harry Potter's home, where parts of the movie were filmed. Remember the scene in the dining room? That was filmed at Trinity College's dining facilities. I peered through a crack in the door as we stepped by and, yup, students actually eat in the same ornate setting with seats lining the long tables.

Besides buildings, bicycles were the distinctive feature of Cambridge. It was a bike-riding, street-walking kind of town. New bicycles, old bicycles, beat-up bicycles were everywhere. They spoke not so much of transportation but of a lifestyle. Students zipped by on the streets to class, while the more elderly bike riders -- professors perhaps -- moseyed along the sidewalks, their wheels carving back and forth in what appeared to be a drunken attempt to stay balanced.

I was in Cambridge for less than 24-hours for an admissions interview. Our 747, against odds, had taken off in 14-inches of snow from Washington DC and set down in Heathrow only an hour late. Of all the cancelled flights, luckily it had not been this one. The National Express bus ride from Heathrow was surprisingly quick and gave me a good view of the British countryside. The latter can be characterized mostly by the word "green." Just as one would imagine it, really: sheep and horses grazing, houses sitting idly, the expressway seemed oddly out of place in this setting.

The humid air made it bitterly cold. And I was not dressed for it. As we passed from one drafty building to another, I would shudder and immediately look for any source of warmth. Even the room at my B&B was frustrating: I turned up the heat to the max before I left and in a few hours walked into a sauna. But as soon as I lay down on the bed to watch some TV, the cold from the nearby window froze my head. The window was closed. That night, I slept with the blanket up over my head, my feet sticking out bare by the heater.

You always leave England, like Italy I think, wanting to speak like the locals. Even after just one night in the UK, I think the flight attendant could have noted a smigeon of "Britishe" in my tongue. I've added some "sort ofs" and "rights" to my everyday speech because, well, it's just cool. But how do you get those rosy cheeks?

More pictures from the trip are available in NakedSky's gallery section.