Cambridge - things to do

[fretaway]

We are meeting up with family for lunch at a restaurant in the City Centre near Grand Arcade.
There’ll be a range of ages from 5 through to 80. What else can we do afterwards? Not too much walking and preferably nearby because of the older ones.

I'd say the Fitzwilliam Museum. There's a lot of good free galleries and they also have a bookable exhibition on at the moment. Colleges are in term so not open aside from Kings College Chapel.

Re restaurant near the Grand Arcade - since the arcade is very central and has no restaurants in it, I'd be interested to know where. If not chain restaurant I'd guess at Chop House.

Punting is fun.

There's a few nice little museums all right next to the Grand Arcade. My 4 year old and I enjoy the Zoology Museum, and the Sedgwick (geology/dinosaurs) and Anthropology museum which are right across the road. Don't expect anything like the big London museums but they're free and quite interesting! We like the huge totem pole at the anthropology museum and the whale at the zoology museum.

The Fitzwilliam is a maybe 10 minute walk away, art and antiquities there.

If you're happy to walk a little more, the botanic garden can be really lovely on a nice day.

Unfortunately I do feel the city centre is lacking a little in attractions besides the colleges etc. We're local and do still love punting, but obviously that's more fun on a sunny day.

One really nice thing to do can be to attend something like choral Evensong at one of the colleges, if timings work out. These are often free and open to the public. I'm not religious but have still really enjoyed it, very atmospheric. Unsure if it would be suitable for a 5 year old though.

If it’s dry and you have kids, you could head onto Parker’s Piece or Christ’s Pieces - the latter used to have a playground.

We are meeting at Smokeworks on Free School Lane, it specialises in BBQ which is a hit with everyone and Jack’s Gelato is opposite for ice cream afterwards.

Maybe look for all the ‘dinky doors’

Thanks, there’s some great museum suggestions, think we will pick one. Hoping for better weather but it’s pretty wet over the next few days.

I'd go zoology as a starting point, super close by and free.

On the way to the Fitzwilliam and part of the same foundation as the Chop House.

Jacks Gelato - very good 😀

They might find the Corpus clock interesting, OP.

https://corpus-christi-college.shorthandstories.com/time-flies/index.html

If you have time, there's a tour bus which you can get on at a range of stops. It has a commentary telling you interesting facts as you go round.

https://www.stagecoachbus.com/promos-and-offers/east/city-sightseeing-cambridge

The Whipple museum of the history of science is in that area too, which has some interesting stuff.
https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/whats/exhibitions-and-displays