Cambridge!

Cambridge University. It is a giant university comprised of a bunch of smaller colleges (like Queen's, Kings, Cais, Christ's- you name any saint or religious figure and it is probably also the name of a college at Cambridge). The University sprawls through the city of Cambridge and serpentines across the river Cam. In fact, the whole area was named because there was a bridge that ran across the river Cam. Thus, Cambridge. So, the correct way to say the name is Cam-bridge instead of Came-bridge (as I say it :D).

Well, in Cambridge we had a few things planned. We first went punting on the river Cam. Punting in the river is a great way to see a lot of the colleges architecture and their grounds because there are about a dozen of them that back up to and even span both sides of the river. Each college even has their own bridge on the river. We took a day trip out to Cambridge about three weeks ago (yeah, I know, this post has been a long time in coming). It is only an hour and a half to two hour drive away from London, so the trip wasn't that long- of course, I've discovered that you can get pretty much anywhere in England in the space of a 2-3 hours drive, and the max drive time from the Land's End (the southernmost tip of the UK) to the tipy top of Scotland in the north is probably only about 9 hours or so. I think I'll really have to get used to driving long distances again when I get back to the states- everything is so close together here.

Punting, if you didn't know, is where you have a long metal stick or rod that you use to push your boat along a river that is really shallow- shallow enough for a 10-15 foot rod to reach the bottom with about 6 feet to spare. There is one person in the back of the boat who stands and pushes the boat along the river, while the rest of the people sit back, relax and enjoy the view.

My view, as we went along, was fantastic, by the way. Our punter, David, was gorgeous. In fact, I believe he was named after a popular statue- the two share quite a resemblance. When our group got to the docks where the punting was, we all filed into three big raft-boats, without knowing who would be our punter yet. Lucky day, David just so happened to be our boat's punter. As I looked at my punter (hotty!) and then scanned the other two boats (one was a girl and one was a boy) I knew that we had scored! Big time- by far. The girls in the boat with the girl punter were laughing, giggling, and jealously stealing glances at our punter, and, as we all punted down the river, I think they tried talking to David more that even the girls in my own boat did.

The poor guy, he must get hit on a ton. By the end of the trip we knew that he had a girlfriend he'd dated for a year and a half, and that he had punted for 6 summers and one winter, which he hated, but that he loved his job and he recommended Cafe Rogue for dinner. It was the best part of the day, to say the least.

After punting with David, we went over to the local museum, took a quick peak at all the lovely paintings and artifacts there (about an hour and a half) and then another girl, Sara, and I, went searching for Cambridge hoodies and dinner. I know, way touristy, but I'm excited to be able to wear my Cambridge University hoodie when I get back to BYU. Yeah, it's all about how it looks. In fact, just this last week, I was asked if I went to Cambridge, but I had to say I didn't. I should have played it off (there are a lot of foreigners who go there) but I wasn't smooth enough or quick thinking enough to do that.

At the end of the day, I was quite satisfied with everything that we did. It was one of our more chill and relaxed trips; we didn't have to rush from place to place, and there was no big hurry because we only really had the punting and the museum planned, and then the rest of the day was ours to walk around and hang out. It was really fun and very much a little college town. It was neat because school was in session, so it was fun to be around other college age students like myself, but just from another school.