The Day Pursuit of Science

On Friday night at about 8:00, we decided that we would make a day trip yesterday to Cambridge, and what a fantastic last minute decision that turned out to be.  Cambridge was absolutely everything and more than one could imagine, and it was a simple one hour train ride from London.  While Oxford is recognized as the University of the Arts, Cambridge is known as the University of the Sciences.  The city itself is just an amazing image of turrets and spires, small winding streets, ancient bridges over the Cam River, huge University green spaces, and unknown to us before the trip, "Punting," which I will explain in more detail later.  So, the City and University of Cambridge consists of 31 separate colleges.  It is just one college after another, all mostly built in the 13th or 14th centuries where Kings and Queens attempted to show the extent of their wealth by outdoing their predecessor with a new college.  There are essentially 5 or 6 main colleges (St. John's, King's, Trinity, Corpus Christi, Queen's, and Magdalene) along the river that are the most famous and were the places of education for something like 80 Nobel Prize winners, 13 British Prime Ministers, Scientists, Mathematicians, Authors, and Poets of the likes of Darwin, Newton, Watson, Crick, Wordsworth, and Hawking.  We stood in the courtyard of Trinity college where Sir Isaac Newton first calculated the speed of sound.  We had a pint in a pub called the "Eagle" where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of the DNA Double Helix.  This Pub is also completely graffitied from WWII when the British and US Air Force Pilots stationed nearby would come and drink and try and forget about their bombing missions from the day.  One interesting fact shared with us was that Magdalene College was the last college in Cambridge to finally admit women, and that was in 1988.  It is just a city steeped with the history of education.

So, "Punting."  Punting is essentially the Cambridge version of Venetian gondaliering.  As you will see from some of the posted pics, some of the best views of the colleges were from the river on the punts(boats).  They are powered by a guide using a long pole to push off the bottom of the river.  You can also choose to punt yourself which provided for some good entertainment.  We saw a girl completely take a plunge into the river.  This river is fed from the North Sea just 50 miles north, so you can imagine how cold this water is in March!!!  Also of note, each college on the river has their own punts, so students can hit the river whenever they want.  As should be expected of any university student, drinking and punting have been combined, so apparently the river can take on the aura of a good old fashion float trip at times, albeit probably a little more proper than most of the float trips that I have been on!!!  Anyway, we had an incredible guide who Punts to make some extra money, but is currently a student at Trinity getting his Masters in Industrial Design.  As we punted down the river, he gave us a great history of each college along the bank and also shared some fun trivia and facts.  Even thought it was a bit chilly yesterday, the sun was shining most of the day, and it was so much fun to have that experience on the river.

Well, that was our fantastic Saturday.  We are planning on a Sunday of rest today.  We may try and go for a run in Hyde Park, but we awoke to a typical chilly, rainy London day, so we shall see how motivated we are.  We are both here again this week.  It doesn’t look like Ann will travel again for work until the first week of April when she is flying to Cape Town, South Africa for some meetings, and I am tentatively heading to Glasgow and Edinburgh for work that week.  Amazing, our 1 year anniversary is 2 weeks from today.  Wow, what an incredible 12 months of marriage, and we say to each other all of the time we would never have guessed 12 months ago that we would be celebrating our 1^st anniversary while living in another country.  Life has a strange was of happening sometimes, and we are so lucky for that.  Now we are trying to figure out how we are going to celebrate our anniversary.  We started talking about it last night over dinner in Cambridge.  I suggested that we had the flexibility to celebrate our anniversary “anytime,” and that is when the conversation turned lively.  That was definitely not an appropriate answer, and I am still hearing about it this morning.  Ann, of course, played on my answer by asking if we will celebrate sometime this summer. Even though our anniversary is on Sunday, March 27^th, we will be celebrating our anniversary on Saturday, March 26^thJ 

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