punting on the cam

today we headed to cambridge to continue our whirlwind tour of everything british. today's excursion was decidedly less academic than originally planned due to the unforeseen closure of museums on monday. who knew? so we had a looksee around the library at cambridge which was having a special exhibit on darwin (150th year since origins coinciding with the 800th year of the university=reason to party and by party i mean put together an exhibit in the room in the basement). they had a couple pretty cool things including a first edition of origins that darwin had sent to wallace in which wallace had crossed out every time darwin wrote "natural selection" and substituted "survival of the fittest" instead and then some sheets of the first draft manuscript of origin that had been given to darwin's kids as drawing paper and feature such scenes as "the battle of the fruits and vegetables" on the back. so that was neat.

then we had lunch with janet browne who is a harvard professor who is super duper into darwin and has basically made her entire career on studying his correspondences. she's doing research in cambridge for the summer. so we had a nice lunch at a little cafe where i had my first full english breakfast, only the vegetarian option which replaces black pudding (ew) with french fries (yum). after this delicious lunch we made the discovery that the museum was closed. so instead, we called up the punting place where we had made reservations for later in the afternoon, moved them 2 hours earlier, bought sodas and pastries, and headed to where our boats were!

punting was an adventure to say the least. there were 15 of us which meant that we had to go in 3 boats. but only 2 people (prof. durant and paul our TF) had ever punted before. i immediately volunteered to be in the non-experienced boat and it was AWESOME. we all traded off and did it and although it took each of us a few minutes we eventually got the hang of it and were even the first ones back to the dock at the end. but not without a few minor bumps into other boats. but no one fell off and we didn't have to use the emergency paddle! we basically went up the river cam along what is known as "the backs." there are the backs of 8 of the cambridge colleges which face onto the river on either side. they are among the oldest ones and are really beautiful.

nick prays while mike gets a less-than-a-minute tutorial in punting.
and we're off!

i give it a go next. mike is totally not clutching the gunnels for dear life...

the views of two of the colleges. on the left was st. john's and i'm not sure what was on the right
we basically had no clue what we were going by but would knowledgeably repeat any tidbit we heard from passing tour guides. highly effective.

gunneling up for chelsea buns!

nick is a superior tour guide while maxwell expertly navigates the bridges.
we overheard that the bridge in this picture is called the bridge of sighs because students supposedly need to walk through it to get to where they take their exams. or something.

sometimes, things got stressful. like when those kids in the boat on the left couldn't figure out how to go straight and resorted to palming their way along the bank.

things on the other end of the boat (and the river) were much more peaceful.

afterward, in celebration of surviving, i made a new friend with an old dog on the docks!

after all this we headed to the pub next door for fish and chips for dinner just to round out the typically british day. and then, just for good measure, a few of us headed to the eagle before hopping the train back to london. the eagle was an air force hang out for both brits and americans during world war II and has lots of cool memorabilia and stickers and graffiti from that time (although i didn't see any 82nd airborne stuff in there), but more significantly for me anyway, was also the pub where watson and crick announced that they had discovered the secret to life! pretty cool.
now it's a little after 11 and i have to do some reading. normal class tomorrow but no afternoon excursion (phew!) but we are going to see harry potter!!