Cambridge

A few weekends ago I ended up in the small college town of Cambridge. This must be a pretty cool place to go to school except for all the tourists. Two of the the things I noticed about this charming little town were that you never seem to be alone here and I always felt like I was being watched. Not the London kind of being watched where your every move is recorded on CCTV (I've always wondered what good all of those cameras are doing as whenever you see footage the criminal always looks the same. It's always fuzzy pictures of the same guy wearing a hood. Oops lost track there). Where was I, oh yeah being watched, I'll get to that in a bit.

Cambridge University, in which the town was built around, is a conglomeration of some 31 different Colleges. I know it doesn't make any sense to me either. There is no central campus like you would see at universities in the states. The picture above is of Kings College. The pictures below show the Kings College Chapel.

Most of the colleges were pretty impressive but a few were just wow. Kings College, Trinity, and St. Johns were the most impressive. I believe that's Trinity College to the left of the Chapel (looking at the Chapel from The Backs) and The Senate to the right (go to this website to learn more about Cambridge and its buildings).

Speaking of Trinity, the college of Sir Isaac Newton (apparently there is an apple tree in the courtyard that is descended from the one at his home in Lincolnshire where the whole gravity thing took place), has what is called The Great Gate. The gate which leads into the college grounds (seen below) was built in 1530. Above the gate is a statue of Henry VIII.

If you look closely at King Henry, I like to call him Hank, he is holding a chair leg. That's odd. Anyway the story goes that a few students decided to steal Hank's sceptre and replace it with a chair leg. Nobody knows where the sceptre is now and I would imagine that they probably can't find the chair with the missing leg either. So if you happen to know an old Cambridge grad have a look around their attic, you never know what you might find.

Well after looking closely at good ole Hank, I kind of felt I was being watched. The two lion like things holding up the coat of arms (ok you have to admit they are a bit funny looking) seemed to be following me with their eyes. Ok maybe it was the sun getting to me, but as I looked around the town I noticed there were a lot of really nosy statues looking over me. Here are just a few.

This trio probably has a story behind them, in fact all of these characters probably have stories. Ok I don't know those stories so feel free to correct my assumptions (you knew they were coming). Well these guys above are apparently up to no good. If you look closely you can see their eyes are scanning the crowd. I figure once they find the unlucky soul, I'm sure they are going to throw those objects that they are holding at him or her. Punishment for making them wait around so long. I'm happy to say they didn't throw anything at me.

This is one of my favorites. I don't know why she is standing on this poor guy but he must have done something really awful. Notice she also has something to throw, they were an angry lot.

I almost caught this one staring at me but her eyes glazed over when I took the picture (I get that look a lot so didn't think too much about it). I actually did catch the guy below just staring, he didn't even look away when he knew he was caught. Don't worry I didn't hear any voices, that would just be crazy.

There were hundreds of these little statues hanging around on the buildings. Pretty cool stuff, I wonder what their real stories are. I'm sure I could find out but that would take too much time.

This poor little guy wasn't feeling very good when I took it's picture. I did feel sorry for it but what could I do.

A few more things about Cambridge that you should know. You are never more than 100 yards from a church, a former church, or a chapel. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little but not much.

I think this is the Roman Catholic Church called the Catholic Church of Our Lady and The English Martyrs. Not a 100% sure about that since the one from the other side of town (below) looks somewhat similar. I'm still looking for the name of the one below.

Ok, I'm running out of time for this post. It might be getting a little long and I have so much more to say. So stay tuned for part two where you will find out more about St. John's College and my night of choral music and even a Shakespeare play. I'll leave you with one more statue with something to throw.

He kind of looks like Robin Williams in one of his not so good movies.