Cambridge Trip

4/4/08

We started off our day at 10:45 am when we took the train to the town of Cambridge. The day was beautiful and the sun was shining. When we first got off the train the town seemed really modern and we had to walk about 20 minutes before we hit one of the colleges. The buildings were so old and I honestly thought that this town was better then Oxford. They are both really different though. Oxford is a larger city/town. And Cambridge is alot smaller with more to see all compacted all together.

We made our way to the center of the town and found the main river that flows through all of the old town of Cambridge. We decided that the best way to see the town would be to take a punting boat ride on the river. Many of you know what a gondola ride is in Italy, it is where there is the man on the back of the boat that stands and pushes the boat with a stick. Our tour guide was so funny and told us some great stories about the history of Cambridge and what students are like today. He told us about a student a few years ago that lived in one of the dormitories and when he went to take a test he looked on his contract for is dorm and it said that "a man must be given ail and cheese when he would take an exam." And obviously this rule was made hundreds of years ago but he thought that it would be funny to start enforcing that rule again. Well his teacher gave him his ail and cheese after a huge fuss and then after he took the test his teacher failed him, not because he did bad on his essay but because his teacher did a bit of homework of looking at the rights on the contract as well and what the boy forgot to read is that he must bring a shield and sword with him to class, and he didn't so the teacher failed him. We all laughed at that story. The tour took us to all of the colleges and the ride was about 45 minutes long.

After that we headed to some of the shops to get some souvenirs. Then we made a mad rush to the train station. That tends to be the story of our lives here. We always stay until the very last second in a place and then we end up running to the train. Well we missed our train but that was ok because the train runs ever half hour so that was good. Then when we got back to the center we decided that we should finish up on some home work but that is about our day in Cambridge, it was great!