Trips

Thurs., 6/9/16 – London – Cambridge
        This morning we abandoned our group again and headed out to Cambridge on our own.  We took the tube to Kings Cross Station and bought train tickets to Cambridge. .
            In Cambridge we paid 12 GBP each for the Hop-on-Hop-off bus and got on right at the train station.  We sat on the top of the open double-decker bus and listened through headphones (ear buds) to an excellent audio explanation of the university city.  There was so much information I wanted to ride the 90-minute loop again but we ran out of time.
            Cambridge is a university formed from a variety of institutions, which include 31 constituent colleges, four theology seminaries, and over 100 academic departments organized into six schools.  Each provides its students with courses and housing.  Students may or may not attend morning lectures, but must meet with their supervisors to discuss content and then “engage in physical activity” in the afternoons.  We passed by many manicured fields for rugby, football (soccer), cricket, tennis, field hockey and lacrosse, and rowing boat houses.  Cambridge is the second oldest university in England, Oxford being older. Crick and Watson, who modeled the structure of DNA, Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, Stephen Hawking, Sir Ian Wilmut - responsible for the first cloning of a mammal with Dolly the Sheep in 1996, Sir John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton - split the first atom here, and J. Robert Oppenheimer - leader of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - studied at Cambridge, and the list goes on and on.
            Our tour took us out to the only WWII American Military Cemetery in England.  The land is owned by the US and maintained by the US government.

Hop On-Hop off bus	Cambridge University - King's College Chapel
	Cambridge American Cemetery
We hopped-off the bus in the city center and strolled around near Kings College (1441) and the market square.  The outdoor market was in full swing with fresh produce, clothes, souvenirs, bakery, food kiosks, etc.	Transportation
A Market!
	Street scene
Street scene	King's College
We ate lunch at the Eagle Pub, which was recommended to us by Sarah, Marge’s niece, who studied for a semester here a few years ago.  It was a traditional English pub and was enjoyable.	The Eagle
	The Eagle
The Eagle	After lunch, we got back on the bus and rode the rest of the loop. We learned where the term “Pub Crawl” came from.  King Street in Cambridge once had 14 pubs and students had a contest to see who could drink a pint of beer at each pub and be the first to get to the end of King Street without “losing any of the fluid from either end – pee or puke.”  The record was 14 pints in 19 minutes!! There are only five pubs on King Street now.             Mr. Harvard graduated from Emanuel College here, went to America on the Mayflower, and donated all of his books on his death to establish a university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Another tidbit: rugby rules were standardized here.
Trinity College	Bicycle shop
Playing fields	Street scene
We would call them speed bumps	Cambridge train station

        We took the train, another express, through lush fields of various grains and picturesque countryside, back to Kings Cross station and learned that the tube train we wanted was not running for some reason so we hoofed it to another train line going up escalators, through tunnels, and down again, and took two other lines to detour around and back to our hotel.  We got there in time to change shirts and get to our orientation briefing with our new PD, Liz.  And then we had the same buffet dinner at our hotel that we had when Phil said goodbye to us at our Farewell Dinner. Another fun, different, more relaxing day.

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