Cambridge, England

I didn't realize Cambridge was such a tourists' town. While spending a scant two nights in Duxford, England we had a day in between to go see Cambridge. I figured it was worth my while to see a university as old and prestigious as Cambridge. Furthermore, I wanted to look at it and feel no remorse for having shunned the opportunity to go there for a year before graduate school in the states. I feel mildly vindicated.

First things first...
We nearly got on the bus going the wrong way from Duxford as there was only one side with a proper bus stop. Luckily the bloke across the way pointed us in the right direction. We had a lovely hour-long bus ride on the top of a two-decker bus. About half the journey was through countryside, and the other half through small villages and cities. Upon arriving in Cambridge, we did our normal thing of setting out on foot to see what the hell is going on in town. Immediately I was drawn toward some strange, yet familiar sounding music. I saw a guy with a long lock of hair, wearing some bizarre "ancient" clothing and a group of similarly dressed (and apparently like-minded) folk playing strange old instruments. The aforementioned first guy, ostensibly the leader of the band, was playing what I can best describe as a two-neck guitar wherein one neck had 6 strings and the other 8. It had a higher pitch and terribly different timbre than a guitar, but he played it as if he were playing rhythm guitar for The Who. I think the band was called PenKelt. I'll check back in with you on that one. We sauntered on into town a little further and stopped in to see the Great St. Mary's. Honestly, while it was beautiful, it really was just another grandiose church in Europe. There are so many big ass churches everywhere on this continent. I really wanted to see King's college, but it was six pounds fifty just to enter the chapel. I know John Rutter and Stephen Cleobury have been there, but honestly... 6.50 to go into another chapel which is literally across the street from the free one I just stepped into? Then I realized I couldn't go see anything at all without first going through the chapel, so I walked around the outside to ascertain whether anything interesting was happening inside or not. Apparently, it was a normal summer friday in king's college. We tried Clare College to, but to enter the lawn area was three pounds. Yeesh. All the meantime we were walking around getting harassed by poor university students trying to sell us punting tours. The punts by the way, are not dissimilar from the gondolas of venice. They looked ok, but in the end there are multiple walkways up and down the river running through cambridge, and they are FAR easier to navigate. In addition to all that, you don't have to wear a life jacket. So we walked around for a bit. Luckily we had nice weather for a few hours whilst still in jolly ol' england.

We sat down for a quick lunch across the way from King's which turned into a 90 minute ordeal where we had "traditional" english food served to us by Turks. In the meantime we met a retired parliamentarian and his wife. They were lovely, but I had a hard time hearing them over the clammer of the turkish waiters running around frenetically.

Later on the walk, some jackass with two pitbulls asked me for some change to help feed his dogs. So I begrudgingly gave him 20p which he promptly told me was not enough. We had a 5 second back and forth of me saying "I didn't have to give you anything" and him retorting "That's an insult brov" and throwing the coin back at me. I've never had someone throw money at me after asking for it moments before.

My overall impression of Cambridge was that it is a lot like New York or Paris with a fetish for music from the middle ages and japan. Also, all the street performers are erudite hippies who had some bizarre specialized skill possessed by only a handful of living people and perform for a few quid a day.

When we returned to Duxford, our host told me that this is called "the silly season" at Cambridge. It's filled to the brim with Asian tourists trying to make sure their sons and daughters are good enough to get into Cambridge. I wondered why I had seen so many Korean kids in identical track suits...