London Day-Trip: Cambridge

Aug 4, 2012 | Travel | 0 comments

Cambridge is another beautiful college town, similar to Oxford (but don’t tell them that, they are bitter rivals). Cambridge was actually founded by some men from Oxford hundreds of years ago that decided to go off and study separately.

Josh and I visited King’s College, and the chapel may look familiar to you Harry Potter fans. It was gorgeous inside and out, with a highly decorated side (completed in the decorative Tudor times) and the less elaborately decorated quire side that was completed earlier. This chapel was dedicated during the reign of King Henry VIII and Anne Bolyn, thus aging it between the 3 years between their marriage and her execution.

After touring the chapel and grounds of King’s College, Josh and I took a punting tour of the river and saw the colleges that are built along the riverside. One of them looks like a fairy-tale castle, but only on the side seen across the river by their rival college. The side not visible from that other college is just plain brick with vines growing over it.

Punting is a learned skill, but the many groups who decided that they could just hop on the boat and try their hands at it were very amusing for our skilled guide to navigate around. They were crashing into each other and everything else. We kept waiting for someone to fall into the river, and our guide said that they do regularly, but we didn’t have the pleasure of laughing at anyone during our trip.

We also looked at the famous Grasshopper Clock, which is terrifying. The grasshopper is one of the most sinister looking mechanical objects you will ever see. I couldn’t get a very good picture of it because of the light’s glare on the window.

I liked Cambridge quite a bit, and the weather was beautiful. I am so impressed with beautiful old universities, and it’s interesting that they continue the medieval teaching methods to the modern day.

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