Hey folks, how goes? It has been a busy week for me, as you'll see.
So what have I been up to lately, you want to know? Last weekend we visited
Cambridge, a city 50 mi north of London. From what I saw when I was there, it seemed like a tiny, antique village, but I think we actually were only in the historic district because Cambridge is actually a little bigger than my hometown. In any case, most of the buildings we saw dated back to the 1400s. How cool!
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| Kings College courtyard |
In Cambridge, we saw the outside of
Queens' College from a bridge over the River Cam. We then went inside
Kings College. The cathedral is
a tall, one-room, rectangular Gothic church made of stone with a high arched ceiling and colorful stained glass in most of the walls. It was founded in 1441 by Henry VI.
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| Kings College cathedral |
From there, the group moved on to see
Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII , where
Isaac Newton went to school and lived for 30 years. There's even a cutting of his apple tree there (apple trees only live about 250 years--did you know?).
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| Newton's bay window and apple tree cutting |
We had a fantastic tour guide named Mary. She started off by telling us that Cambridge is almost always sunny--naturally, the day we went was absolutely frigid, rainy, and gusty, but as the Great Butter Queen,
Paula Deen, once said on the Food Network, "There's nothing like rain to make a party more cozy!" And so it went once we got into a pub for lunch.
At first we tried to go to
The Eagle, which has been in operation since the 1400s and was where Watson and Crick ran in at lunch to announce their discovery of the structure of DNA. The place was absolutely perfect, exactly what you'd expect of such a historic pub, but it was jam packed and we couldn't find a table.
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| My first fish and chips |
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| The Regal--view from third floor |
So we moved on to my other pub pick,
The Regal. It is the largest pub in the United Kingdom with 3 floors and 2 bars. It was there that I made an exception in my 7 years of vegetarianism by ordering
fish and chips with mushy peas. Yum! The fish was mild and not terribly fishy-tasting like the few aquatic creatures I ate in my childhood when I dared move beyond eternally classy fish sticks. I especially liked the mushy peas, actually. One of my friends in the group got a hot pear and raspberry dessert that she let me try, and that was really good. I also got another pint of Strongbow, which is quickly becoming my favorite drink over here--I like it more than Carlsberg or Guinness, but
Kopparberg pear cider is fantastic too. It's from Sweden, I believe.
After lunch we wandered around town, picked up some souvenirs, and made it to the
Fitzwilliam Museum. Unfortunately, no photography allowed. There were some paintings, even Monet, and a floor full of cool Egyptian stuff and Mesopotamian jewelry.
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| Evening at Kings College for the Evensong choir |
By then it was dusk and we headed back to Kings College for a church service and to hear the famous
Evensong choir consisting of boys aged about 7 to 15. They were fantastic, and it was a beautiful service in the candlelit Gothic church.
Cambridge has been one of my favorite things so far about England; I really enjoyed getting out of the big city and getting to walk cobblestone streets with old-fashioned lampposts and little bridges across the river. I highly recommend it if you are able to get there.
