Punting Cam-Bridge

As advertised yesterday, me and all my fellow CSB/SJU'ers went to the city of Cambridge today. It is a city steeped in history but alive with the present (haha, I made that one up myself). Honestly, it's a college town (almost literally). I have to say that it was the most picturesque place we have been as a group yet.

Cambridge has always been a pretty popular place. Romans and Normans were here long before the first college. It's called Cambridge because there is a river running through it called the Cam and there are numerous bridges over it (picture 1). Thus Cam-Bridge. Scholars started coming here at around the 13th century. The first and most famous College in all of Cambridge is King's College. It was founded by King Henry VI in 1441. The Chapel is by far the most famous building in Cambridge as well and is a true Gothic building (most of the other buildings on King's College are from the 19th century and are Neo-Gothic). The Chapel was built in the Middle Ages and is really amazing inside. King's College is not the only college in Cambridge though. There are 30 (!) other colleges to chose from.

The colleges in Cambridge don't offer any classes per say. The University of Cambridge does. I should mention that there are about 14,000 undergraduates at the University and 6,000 graduates. Its like St. Ben's and St. John's except with 29 other choices and they are all in the same town if that makes sense. You live with only people from your college but you take classes with everyone. Each college has an identity of some kind (radical, conservative, easy going, all women, etc.). King's College is known as a radical type of college. It accepts more students from state schools (public high schools) than any other and was the first to accept women.

We started the day by getting on a bus at 8 am. The group of students from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR (also doing stuff with FIE) was going to Cambridge today too so we decided to share a bus. The coach was a double decker type coach. The ride was 2 hours long and went through some nice English countryside. I noticed that we drove near Saffron Walden, where Sonya lives so I did a little tip of the hat. I had no idea that we were driving close to it. We got to Cambridge and waited for our tour guides. The first stop on the tour was The Eagle Pub. Its near a college (I forgot the name) where a bunch of really big scientific discoveries were made. The electron and neutron were discovered here, the atom was first split, and some other stuff. The guys working on the DNA blueprint discovered it here and when they figured it out, went to The Eagle to announce it, instead of going to their supervisors. The Eagle was also a big hang out spot for WWII troops stationed near Cambridge. They graffittied the ceiling (picture 2). We walked by a church and to a Fudge Shop where we watched a guy make fudge (picture 3). We had a free sample. Yum!

The main thoroughfare of Cambridge is the King's Parade. Along it is Trinity College which has the Wren Library. The library houses the first manuscripts of Winnie the Pooh (the author lived near here) and a bunch of stuff from Sir Isaac Newton including a lock of hair (he went to Trinity College). Then we walked along the Cam and into King's College Chapel (picture 4). The Chapel was started by Henry VI in 1441 but was added on to by the Tudor's (1500's). Henry VIII added the big screen (the brown thing is the screen and the stained glass goes along each side in picture 5) seperating the antechapel from the "Holy Part". It's made of wood and is very decorated with carvings. The ceiling has fan vaulting which is just crazy to look a (picture 6). It also has a TON of stained glass windows that, thankfully, Oliver Cromwell didn't smash to pieces. This is where our tour ended.

From the Chapel, we met up with Dominic, a guy who used to work for FIE and did his graduate work at Cambridge. He told us about the application process and some other stuff about the colleges like what classes are like and how the whole system of colleges and the university works. He did a pretty good job but it was really cold out (super windy). I did not prepare for this when I got ready in the morning to leave. It sucked. I was basically cold all day and Dominic spent the whole hour or so talking outside. Not good. Anyway, he brought us to Pembroke College (building of the college picture 7) which is where he lived. We walked inside the chapel which was designed by Christopher Wren (Wren Library and St. Paul's Cathedral in London). We also walked by the gardens and the dining hall. Very pretty. I will say this about Cambridge, they like and take care of their grass. As a former lawn care specialist (haha), I know good grass when I see it and there was good grass everywhere.

After Dominic got done, we had about 3.5 hours of free time. Me, Nick, Anna, Vanessa, and Amy went punting. Punting is taking a flat bottom boat that looks like a gondola out on the River Cam. You steer it with a 15 ft. pole. Sounds interesting? Well it was. I never actually punted but I did use the small paddles to help steer. Anna punted first. She did a good job getting the hang of it. It looked really tough but some people going by gave us some pointers after seeing us get turned around. The Cam was so beautiful and it was really warm sitting in the boat in the sun (River Cam with punts on it picture 9). The Cam gives good views of "The Backs". That being the lawns from the backs of the colleges down to the river (the Back of King's College with Chapel picture 8). When our time was half up, Anna and Nick switched. Nick also did a really good job (picture 10 has Nick punting with Anna on right and Amy on left along for the ride). Our time was up soon so we headed back. From there we went to the Fitzwilliam Museum. It has a wide variety of art of artifacts. Things ranging from Egyptian to Roman to Picasso to Monet to Japanese Porcelain. We didn't spend a ton of time here and didn't examine all the stuff super closely. We spent the most time in the Egyptian and medieval armor galleries. From the museum, we went back to King's College Chapel.

This deserves it's own paragraph. We had to wait in line to get into the Chapel for the evensong performance. While we were waiting in line, the sky and clouds were phenomenal so I walked around and took some just fantastic pictures if I do say so myself (Chapel on the right in picture 12). The sun and clouds were amazing (picture 11 and 13).

As I said, we went to an evensong performance at the Chapel. Evensong is a prayer/choral service that most Church of England churches do. King's College has a really good choir and the service was really cool. I was really tired so it was hard to stand for as long as we had to but the singing was just amazing. The choir was a mix of little boys and guys around my age. We sat right by the choir and there were candles lit all around them. It gave it a very calming atmosphere. Superb. After the evensong, the Lewis & Clark group had to stay for an organ recital. Amy, Vanessa, Peter, along with a few others, and myself decided to stay too. It was unforgetable. The music was by a French guy. It was so weird. Honestly, for the first 15 minutes of the performance, I thought the performer was just warming up. This is the only way I can explain it: imagine sitting a little kid down in front of an organ and letting him/her hit random notes, that was what we listened to for about an hour. According to the pamphlet, it was supposed to be birdsong or something to do with Bible verses but I don't know. It was just toooooo weird. Seriously. You had to be there to really know what I am talking about. It was so crazy that I started laughing and then Vanessa and Amy did and we laughed for a while at just how outrageous these totally random notes were. Then we saw Phil had fallen asleep so we laughed more. Then I noticed one of the Lewis & Clark girls was looking at me from across the aisle so we played the awkward eye contact game for a while and then laughed at each other and the organ "music".

When the "performance" was finally over, I was really excited and clapped a little too loud. The girl across the way saw and laughed. We ended up sitting next to each other on the bus and talked about where we were from and stuff. It was fun. She's from Orgeon which makes me really jealous. Nick and Kristina joined in and the four of us ended up talking about a range of topics including wars and English candy. Good times.

Cambridge was a very interesting experience. I went punting, heard some messed up organ music, saw a bunch of colleges, went to a museum and was really cold in the sunshine. Now that's a wide range of experiences. I really enjoyed all of it though. A nice way to spend a day.

Au Revoir!