My goal, upon arrival in Cambridge, was to stay awake until the end of
the day, so I would be appropriately tired, get a decent night's rest,
and then wake up (mostly) in synch with the new timezone. While it's
true that I arrived at the Cambridge station, I actually needed to change
trains to go one more hop to the Cambridge North station. But that
went OK, and both in King's Cross and Cambridge stations, I was able
to get a wireless Internet connection and send a quick email on my
progress. I didn't want to try to get a SIM card and see if my old
phone would work and then scramble to figure out what to do when it didn't.
Also, unrelated to anything, I don't understand why the King's Cross
station is spelled using an apostrophe but Barons Court is not. (OK,
I just looked it up and basically there's no consensus or rules.
Sometimes names are singular possessive, sometimes plural possessive,
and sometimes just they are just a plural noun. And sometimes they
have changed over time, or are printed differently by different
organizations. I don't think this world (word?) problem is one I have
time to fix at the moment.)
It was cool-ish in Cambridge (50sF/10sC), overcast, and it had rained
a lot in the last week and some areas were still flooded.
My friend Stephanie met me at the train station. After dropping off
my bags, we explored a bit of downtown Cambridge for the afternoon,
making sure I stayed awake long enough. Amusingly enough, Stephanie
seemed more fatigued than I was. But we both stayed awake until the
end of the day.
Part 9: Backyard
Blacksmith Workshop Part 10: Bagby Airfield Part 11: Byland Abbey Part 12: National Railway
Museum Part 13: Cambridge (Part
2) Part 14: Cambridge
Botanical Gardens Part 15: The Departure
001-DSC_0802: Walking along the south side of the River Cam.
002-DSC_0803: A tree on the north bank of the river that was still flooded.
003-DSC_0804: One of the places where the many Cambridge rowing teams keep
their boats. Normally the water doesn't come up that high.
004-DSC_0805: A 3-D town map with Stephanie.
005-DSC_0809: Yeeeeessss....excellent. Everything all falls into
place!
006-DSC_0811: Frank ponders how to execute his Master Plan (pronounced
"mahster plahn").
006-cambridge_cathedral_Panorama: A composite shot of the Cambridge Cathedral.
It's big. I didn't go in.
007-DSC_0816: Twisty, turny, narrow roads with lots of shops and such give the
older parts of Cambridge a distinctive look.
008-DSC_0817: There are no blue police boxes around England (other than
perhaps part of a Dr. Who ad campaign), but the red public telephone booths
are still pretty prevalent.
009-DSC_0818: And the bright red mail boxes ("post boxes")
are also widely available and very visible.
010-DSC_0819: A more dramatic shot of the phone booth/box.
011-DSC_0821: Punting boats to rent (or "let" or "hire"
depending on one's mood).
012-DSC_0822: Someone punting on the River Cam.
013-DSC_0824: More boats for hire. Many people would approach tourists
(I was carrying a camera, after all), promoting their boats as the best
way to see Cambridge. We decided the term "aggressive punter"
seemed like a good, derogative way to describe such a person, whethey
they were associated with boats or not. I want to try to use that
phrase more, even if I have to be a bit of an agressive punter about it.
014-DSC_0825: This was a bank. Around the corner from it was a weird
kinetic sculpture of some bug eating time. I think I didn't feel like
taking a picture of that because it felt touristy and a bland building
was better. A should point out that at this point I hadn't slept for a
day an a half.
015-DSC_0826: Stephanie.
016-DSC_0827: Freaky looking tree branch trying slowly trying to eat a gate.
017-DSC_0829: I'm not sure why I took this. It think the light might
have seemed better or I was just tired. It's a church somewhere I think...
018-DSC_0830: The sun was setting on the Midsummer Common park as we
were heading back.
019-DSC_0832: Someone had added googley eyes to a sign. I don't think
my friend KTM has been here, but perhaps it's another disciple.
Bottom:
Part 9: Backyard
Blacksmith Workshop Part 10: Bagby Airfield Part 11: Byland Abbey Part 12: National Railway
Museum Part 13: Cambridge (Part
2) Part 14: Cambridge
Botanical Gardens Part 15: The Departure