Day 5 – Exploring the city of Cambridge

Cambridge — By Ryan on February 5, 2010 1:36 pm

Day 5 – Cambridge

With all of the sleep that I got on the planes coming over I didn’t need much during the night and just worked through straight on through until the house hold woke up. Much to my delight Fabian’s flatmate had 3 cats so I was in heaven making 3 new furry friends in the wee hours of the morning. It turns out that Fabian’s flatmate has a soft spot for troubled cats and they were all rescued from dangerous plights, all with a different harrowing story behind them. Fabian’s flatmate Jon woke up first at around 7:15 or so and had the pleasure of meeting this Canadian stranger who had turned his living room into his new office. Fabian had told him in advance of my arrival but I don’t think he was expecting to see me working away on his couch first thing in the morning. He turned out to be a delightful chap and we chit chatted as he got ready for work. Fabian wasn’t too far behind waking up and soon enough we were all showered up and ready for the day. It being a friday Fabian had to work that day so we both walked down to his work and he pointed me in the general direction of the main city. There were plenty of signs to guide me down the main roads as well as the little alleyways. A few side streets later and I was crossing a picturesque bridge over a little river and into a big beautiful open area called Jesus Greens, which was a bit of a shock to see on a public sign. Over the bridge I was stopped by the sight of two huge beautiful swans amidst a flock of ducks.

Interestingly enough some of the ducks were also pure white. The swans were very used to humans and came right up to be as I knelt down by the water, clearly dissapointed when they realized I didn’t have anything for them to eat. They are such impressive creatures and being able to get within a foot of them I was in no hurry to go off and explore the oldest functioning city in England. The swans however were much less fascinated with me and within a few minutes of me not producing anyting edible decided to swim off. With this fresh rejection I then decided to go off and see what the fuss was all about with this famous city, luckily for me I soon saw that all the fuss was worth it.

As I exited Jesus Greens and wandered through some more alleyways the buildings grew older and older with each block. Just walking to that point felt like I had gone back in time, but it felt like the hands of time were being wound backwards centuries with each of the last blocks I walked through to get to downtown Cambridge until finally I emerged to a sight unlike anything I had personally seen before. Before my eyes was this ancient city, for the most part looking the same as it had 500 years ago, still being lived in and used as it always had been. It was like a giant museum with people living in it. Wide cobblestone streets filled with people, stone and bridge buildings haphazardly arranged with no perfect grid like we are used to today, streets winding to and fro, small side-streets snaking inbetween it all. Peppered throughout the city were its many many colleges, which were these awe inspiring structured that rivaled the churches in their beauty and grandeur. From what I was told the universities or colleges work differently than what we are used to back home. I was having a tough time understanding how a city of well under 100,000 people could support so many colleges, it didn’t make any sense. But a college in Cambridge doesn’t offer the broad variety of courses or degrees that one back home will. They are very specialized, sticking with only a handful of subjects, meaning they aren’t really in competition with each other. That and there are more students in Cambridge than there are citizens of the city. Each college could be straight out of a Harry Potter film and Fabian later told me that his company rented out one of the dining halls in St. John’s college and said it was exactly like that.

As per usual I didn’t have a plan of what I wanted to see so I just wandered around from place to place, making the most of this cloudy day. There was just a never ending stream of amazingly beautiful architecture that I just stared at. This was my first trip into Europe and I certainly wasn’t prepared to the overwhelming beauty, age and history present in Cambridge. The architecture was unlike anything I had ever seen before with the exception of Fantasy novels and movies. Back home we are so used to everything being made of the same materials designed based on expense and convenience more than anything else. Here it was the opposite, these things were built to last, and this town is a testement to that as it was not only still standing, but being used and thriving. There was also a spirit here that complimented the town itself, it bustled along not just like a modern city but there was also a sense of that timeless tradition with it’s middle-aged populatoin.. There was an open air market in the middle with vendors hawking their goods and a huge stall selling all sorts of fresh breads and pastries. Of course within this old facade there did beat the heart of modernity as a fairly new shopping mall with all of the fixins of one in New york or Montreal, albeit it on a much smaller scale. As nice as it was though it didn’t hold my attention for long as I wandered through the courtyards, walkways and chapels of these amazing colleges.

Daylight began to fade and I figured that I should get my hands on some groceries to make dinner for the house before moseying on back home. Luckily there was a Sainbury right downtown where I picked up some ingredients for my pasta, but not before I caught a pair of opera singers putting on a performance just down the street. They really struck home again the difference in spirit between this town and one back home.. Back home it would be guitarists, jugglers and the such but in Cambridge I was listening to a beautiful operatic performance. I had to stop and pay them homage for as long as they would sing for, but alas there was a jackhammer going on down the road and they eventually gave in to their mechanical competition and calls it quits for the night. I picked up my groceries and moseyed back home, not quite sure if I would be able to find my way back in the dark. My fears quickly faded as I began walking back, making my way home without much fuss until I was not 200 meters away and had to pick one of two exits to a large park. I of course chose the wrong one and had to bring out the map to see where I went wrong.

Fabian was working late that night, as it seems like he does often and so Jon and I had a nice pasta dinner, solved the problems of the world and i settled in for an early night of sleep at around 9pm. Only of course to wake up at 2am and start the next day, which of course is a whole other story unto itself

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Tags: Cambridge, city, england, jesus, swan