Cambridge Hotels
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Day trip to Cambridge
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Yesterday we went to Cambridge for the day. We got the train in the morning and walked around town all day and came back at night. We visited a lot of churches in Cambridge. Overall, England has a ton of churches everywhere, and I enjoy going into all of them to see how pretty they are. This is starting to annoy Eric. lol. So in Cambridge, we toured all the different colleges and went up the tower of Great St Mary's Church. Cambridge is a true college town. There are eight colleges here! This puts Gainesville to shame. lol.
We went punting down the river. Punting is kinda like gondola's in Venice. Only, the boat is bigger, and so is the waterway. But the driver uses a big stick to move you down the river. Our driver was a bright red haired boy, about 18 years old. Some of the first colleges to be founded were built right on the banks of the river. On the riverside the colleges would benefit from this major trade route into the town of Cambridge. The result today is the "Backs", a one mile stretch of river that supports some of finest examples of architecture in England. Altogether there are 8 colleges and 9 bridges. These include Queens' College with the Mathematical Bridge, King's College with its famous chapel, and the Bridge Of Sighs at St. John's college.
Our punter told us a story of the King's College chapel. He said back in the day, students used to climb the buildings and leave things on top, to show their fellow classmates that they really had climbed it. One guy climbed to the top of King's College Chapel and left a traffic cone on the top. The college put up scaffolding on the side of the chapel to take it down, but didn't finish before night time. That night, the student climbed back up, and moved the cone over to the other side of the chapel. lol. Another story of the chapel... During WWII, Hitler said he wouldn't bomb the Chapel, since it was his favorite in England. So everything valuable in the town went inside the Chapel. They took the stained glass down too, to protect it. But they forgot to write down where each pane of glass went. It took 3 years for them to sort out the glass and put it back up in the proper places.
Right about there is where our punter lost his pole. It got stuck in the muck. We floated along aimlesly for a bit before another punter got it and brought it back to us and we were able to continue on our way. In a college town, you can always expect to see something interesting. Farther down the river, some students decided it would be a good idea to float down the river in a blow-up kiddie pool. It actually stayed afloat with all four of them in it! After punting, we visited some shops and then headed for home. More thumbnails ...
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