Back to college?

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Geo: 52.2, 0.11667

First a story. After 9 years, it might be time to retire old Tom. Tom is our Tomtom GPS. I got it as a retirement gift from the guys that I worked with. When I tried to update Tom before we left, it would get to 90% and then would say it failed. We took Tom anyway, knowing that his maps were 8 years old. But as Tom has gotten older, he has gotten slower too. We were pulling up to an intersection yesterday and he told us to go left. As we sat waiting for the light to change, he suddenly told us to go right. Since we were in the left lane I went left. We waited for him to tell us to make a U-turn, but instead he was happy with the left turn and continued on his way. We have also been on roads that he says to go left on the roundabout. There is no roundabout, its a straight road. He is very slow to react to our direction changes and it makes it hard to follow him, especially in the small villages.So we made our way to Cambridge. We found a parking place near downtown and headed over to the Tourist information center. We signed up for a 2 hour walking tour around the colleges of Cambridge. What a place to go to college! Some of the buildings were built in the 13th century. There are 31 colleges in all. All run kind of separately from each other, except that they are all part of the Cambridge University system. During the tour we went in the King's Chapel, which is part of the King's College. It was commissioned by Henry the VI and finished by Henry the VIII. It is amazing! The students are just starting to show up for classes, which start next Tuesday. We saw one boy hugging his crying mother and giving his father a big hug before heading into his college. It was very cute. We walked around for a while and then went and checked into our hotel. This morning it was very breezy and raining. We decided to stay at the hotel for a while and wait out the storm. It had stopped raining by about 11AM, so we took a bus to downtown Cambridge and walked around for a bit and then went over to the River Cam and went on a punting boat. We took a tour of the back sides of the colleges from the river. It was very nice. We had a nice young student doing the punting for us. After the boat ride, we walked around for a while, visited a few churches and actually got to go inside part of some of the colleges. We could only go into the quad areas and not the buildings, though. Tomorrow we drive to the small village of Lavenham, a picturesque English country village and spend the night.

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Photos

The quad at King's College.
The grass is absolutely beautiful, but only the graduating class is allowed to go on it

The ceiling in the King's College Chapel
It is the tallest and largest stone ceiling in the world. It is 80 feet high.

Close up of the ceiling
This is called a fan vault ceiling, very rare

From the top of Great Mary's church
Great Mary's church was in Cambridge before the colleges were built

Comments

[Michele McGauvran]

So beautiful. Love the architecture.

[Michele McGauvran]

Just remarkable. No words. Look at all that stained glass.

[Linda]

Love the windows. You know stained glass windows are my thing!

[Michele McGauvran]

Just stunning.

[bfsize15]

So is the actual school the Cambridge University system and each of the 31 colleges is an area of study? Or is each college it's own separate school and they all make up the Cambridge University system? (can't post in the comments section)

[bfsize15]

Look at that old man by that old door...