Thursday, 2 April 2009

Cambridge - Tally Ho!

Now that Miranda has arrived home - HOORAY! She has day trips planned. Well not planned. I mean last night we were like "wanna go Cambridge tomorrow?" "mmmnnneaaah okay". And with that we set off the very next morning.

As always we plan to catch the early train and are late and see it whizz by us. Oh well. One train down. We then arrived in London, tubed it to Kings Cross Station, passed go and collected 200 dollars. Cambridge away!

To be honest all I really knew about Cambridge was that it was a university. Yeah. It is. The whole place started in the 13th century when scholars from Oxford and Paris felt the need for somewhere new. It's hard getting the historical side of these places without Susanna, our tour guide, so I'm pretty much getting this from the pamphlets they gave us at each college door. As I write this... I'm learning too.

It's a lovely town though. We arrived at the train station and felt very welcome... as you can see... Even the signs were greeting us! After following many signs leading us to the city centre and laughing at the map of Cambridge which has "Jesus" everything with regards to places - Jesus Lane, Avenue, Road, Drive, Library etc. They're pretty clear here about who they like. As we walked we were on the lookout for King's College which was our first college to have a peep at. Eventually, Miranda goes "Hey there's Henry VIII!" And so it was - in stone form. I can see that you were slightly alarmed at the thought of dead historical figures coming back from the dead and creating more history ESPECIALLY Henry! Seeing his statue and then Richard III's statue we knew we had reached King's College. 3 pounds later we had a squeak inside and saw the lovely chapel which would become my favourite of the day (I'm giving away the ending at the beginning but what are you going do?). The best part of this chapel was that it had an original Peter Paul Rubens painting above the altar!! TWO exclamation marks people = I'm excited about Rubens. That was pretty amazing. This college had its foundation stone laid by Henry VI in 1441 so it's pretty old.

We then had look at a street market that was on and bought various goods (which we would later curse and rue the day we went there - but that comes later). The goods consisted of strawberries and banana cake - once again I'll come back.

Then we went to St John's College - another chapel - not as good as the first but still very nice. Walking through the college we went over the Bridge of Sighs named so because it is enclosed and looks like the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Miranda and I felt that it was because when you walk over it you sigh. Like this.
Ahhhhh... *sigh of relief* ... very nice. Looking up the other way of the river were daffodils (are they a weed here?) loads of bicycles (everyone rides them in Cambridge) and a general nice feel. I imagine this is what Amsterdam will be like. Another thing here is the amount of green grass everywhere. It isn't natural it's all in big wide squares with signs commanding no one to stand on it. Yeah... we're dumb tourists... and we figured if anyone yelled at us we would either run or start babbling in a made up language.

Final college of the day! Keep in mind there were way more but we just wanted to see the best ones. Trinity College. Founded by Henry VIII in 1546 this college was home of Sir Isaac Newton! The spot which was once his garden has an apple tree in it which was grown from a cutting from the original apple tree from his home in Lincolnshire. It was only planted in 1954 but the fact is that that tree comes from the original tree! The tree which dropped an apple on his noggin and thus made history. We couldn't see the tree so I won't be changing history with the help of an apple today! Unless someone throws one at me... which I don't think would make want to revolutionise theories of the universe and so on but rather go after the person that through it... Hmm... The main reason we visited this college was because the library (which was closed - grrrr) was built by Christopher Wren! He's a clever bunny. This was another spectacular achievement on his part.

After all this we were quite tired and hungry. So we had the most delicious lunch at this random place and got two delicious pizzas. Oooo I'm hungry now just thinking about it! Here's something weird that I don't think I have mentioned. The Brits have some skew-iff notion about what balsamic vinegar is. On two occasions Miranda and I have had meals with balsamic vinegar and it was sweet. Like chocolate sauce and vinegar mixed together! This time was no exception. We were discussing theories as to why this was and decided they saw a picture of what the meal should look like and the vinegar looked like chocolate sauce so they dumped it on. Still it was yum.

After lunch we had another look around town and went back to the train station and got back to King's Cross Station when Miranda realised I hadn't seen Platform 9 3/4 ! Harry Potter readers will understand this. At last I have made the transition and saw the magical land of Hogwarts and so on! This is real by the way. Totally real. I'm magic. Keep it to yourselves.
This is the end of this blog.
Miranda's strawberries tasted awful. Mine looked like they had been hit by a truck filled with rocks. Miranda's banana cake was dry and unpleasant. Curse that outdoor market in Cambridge! *shakes fist at the sky*
Tomorrow we have a photo shoot! Need to get my beauty sleep...

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