Ely Cathedral Visit... A.K.A. "Weekend Fun Part II"

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Well, I made it through my first "real" Monday. It wasn't too bad since I was only in school half of the day and had my seminar in the afternoon (with a lunch break from 12-2!). A real highlight of my teaching career so far happened today: I got to explain to the kids in my class what a cheerleader was! This included giving a description and showing them a video of a cheerleading routine on youtube. Oh the things we take for granted. I also got to observe in another classroom and it was interesting to see the contrast in teaching styles. I am going to try and observe in many of the classes as possible.

Sad news though. For a very brief time it looked like Ellie was going to buy us a microwave to have at the B&B (food here is turning out to be rather expensive and bland; options are few for us without a kitchen). However, Helen put the kabash on that idea today. Something about the fire code 😞

Anyway, yesterday I took the train to the nearby town of Ely (pronounced "E-lee" like in Robert "E. Lee"). The town's major claim to fame is its cathedral. The train ride was only about 20 minutes so I arrived around 10:30 and just sort of started walking. I had seen the cathedral from the train, so I knew it couldn't be far. Talk about the exact opposite of London King's Cross though. I am convinced that you could board trains in Ely without ever buying a ticket since there are no gates or any kind of barrier. I found my way to the information center which just so happened to be located in Oliver Cromwell's house--the town's most famous resident! Next I headed over to the cathedral where mass was being held. I quickly found out that it (as well as most of the town) didn't really open for business until around noon. So I went for brunch at a little cafe in town which was pretty much right next to the cathedral. When I got back to the cathedral I went to its stained glass museum which was pretty interesting. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the museum since photography wasn't allowed. (Although I definitely saw one man taking pictures!) I enjoyed watching a video about the process of making stained glass and seeing the displays of different periods in the history of stained glass. I just hadn't really thought about it as an evolving art form with its own periods before. I was especially impressed that some of the pieces of stained glass were on loan to the museum from the Queen!

After the stained glass museum, I went down and walked around the cathedral and took some pictures. The whole time I was thinking to myself, "wow, this place is massive... those medieval people were SERIOUS about God!" I signed up to tour the cathedral's octagon tower, because I just thought it was really cool that there was an octagon tower. Interestingly, the tower isn't original to the cathedral. There was an original tower that was identical to the bell tower that became unstable and collapsed 200 years after the cathedral was built. We climbed up the tower a little bit at a time, eventually ending up on its roof! The views from the top were pretty amazing. It was funny, there were two other Americans on the tour, which I was surprised by. At this point, when a person speaks, I just assume they will speak with a British accent. So it's kind of shocking when they don't! By time I got done with the tour my feet were really hurting. All of those stone steps were not very forgiving. So I decided to head back to the train station and catch an earlier train than I had originally planned. Luckily my ticket allowed me to do this. So I came home and propped up my feet. I am not exactly sure what my plans for next weekend are. I think I may stay home and visit the Cambridge Botanic Gardens and the Kings Cross Chapel, but I'll just have to see!

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Photos

duck?
this bird hung out right next to me while I ate brunch. I would like to think he was my buddy, but I think he was more interested in any food I might drop.

Photo 7
this place was huge!