On Sunday, we left the hotel at about 8:00 because we had 9:12 train tickets to Cambridge. Cambridge is a famous university town in England, with the second oldest university in the country (after Oxford). It is a bigger city than I had thought, with a population of about 100,000.

King’s Cross was not difficult to navigate, having “only” ten platforms. Our Harry Potter fans were excited because Platform 9-3/4 is where Harry is supposed to catch his train to school in the books. We assured them that we would make sure they got pictures when we got back, since we were pressed for time.

We got on our train with only a few minutes to spare, to the dismay of a bladder or two. Still, the rail journey was less than an hour, so no one suffered greatly. I was very happy to see London and then the very pretty English countryside roll by – I like train travel in Europe very much since you get to see so much of the country. Several of the students remarked on the countryside as well, but I’m afraid two insane tour guides with their maddening pace, when combined with a gently rocking train, drove several of our students to slumber.

We got to Cambridge a little after 10:00, and by 10:30 we had everyone out of the bathrooms and we were underway. It is supposed to be about a twenty-five-minute walk from the train station to the centre of town, and I was pretty sure we could easily beat that at my pace. I saw a sign to the town centre, and followed it to the right. It turns out that the sign meant the next right at the next road, and not the pedestrian path we found. Mer asked a woman for directions, and she told us to follow the bike trail, which we did. This wound all over, through residential neighborhoods and through a park, and disappeared on us once in awhile. We did finally find Market Square, but it had taken about thirty minutes, and so the kids only had about twenty minutes to find a quick (and early) lunch. I struck out and bought some Cornish pasties, a meat-and-potato-filled pastry that coal miners used to eat in Cornwall. It was the first one I had ever had, and it was very good. I also struck up a conversation with the young woman who was selling the pasties; she saw I had a dollar bill in my passport pouch, so she asked about where she should go in the United States. After chatting for about ten minutes, we came to the conclusion that she should visit Vermont. It was a very pleasant conversation.

Everyone met back up in front of the Guild Hall as agreed upon, and our walking guide met us just a few minutes early. She was a woman named Honor, and she was probably in her late fifties, with longer silver hair. She was very friendly, and she very kindly waited for all of us to finish eating before starting the tour.

A word about Cambridge University – it is one university, but is made up of many colleges. A college in this case is a building or buildings that group students together. It sounds as if it is like the “house system” of the Harry Potter series or somewhat like a fraternity. The various colleges all make up the University, but have intra-college rivalries and sports and the like. Each college seems to have its own grounds and chapels, but some are much more splendid than other. The colleges dominate much of the older section of Cambridge, and the walking tour focused mostly on the colleges, especially King’s College and Trinity College.

King’s College and Trinity College are both very large and beautiful, with Trinity having more grounds but King’s having the very famous King’s College Chapel. Chapel is a laughable word for the the church of King’s College – it rivals anything I have seen anywhere. It may be smaller than Westminster and St. Paul’s, but it is still enormous and very ornate and splendid. The walls of the church are almost all stained glass, with New Testament stories on the bottom row of windows, and corresponding Old Testament stories on top. The ceiling was very ornate, with a fan-shaped pattern repeated throughout the church.

After spending the time in King’s College Chapel, we walked over toward Trinity College. Trinity College is undergoing some construction, so the front gate was closed, but Honor took us to the back gate, which was, happily for us, open. We walked onto the grounds, and wandered there for some time. The grounds were beautiful – the town’s river, the Cam, runs through the grounds, and despite the cold weather, there appeared to be a kayak race in process, as well as several punts (flat-bottomed boats) on the river, with blanketed tourists huddled in them. We could see the outside of the Wren Library, Trinity’s library build by Christoper Wren of St. Paul’s fame, but we could not go in – it was closed. Still, it was a very pretty place to stand in the sun and look around.

We then proceeded back to Market Square, where our tour had begun. We still had about three-and-a-half hours left until we had to get to our train, so we let the kids go (in groups of three or more) to have free time. Everyone scattered to do their own thing, and Mer and I headed off to Cambridge’s local museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Fitzwilliam Museum is an eclectic museum. It has art and armor and everything in between. It is fairly extensive, and we only saw a small part. We rested for a few minutes in the museum cafe while I had a hot chocolate, and then we looked at a room full of decorative folding fans from the last one hundred years or so. Some of them were very pretty. We moved quickly through a room of armor to get to a room full of illustrated manuscripts, as well as some examples of early coins from England. We ended our visit there since we still wanted to eat supper, but even those exhibits took over an hour.

We headed back toward the square, and after hunting around for awhile decided to eat at The Eagle pub. In addition to having pretty good pub food, it is the pub where Crick and Watson are supposed to have announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. So, it seemed a worthwhile stop. After supper, we wandered to a local bakery to have some pastries, and that filled out our free time.

We met the students back in front of the Guild Hall by the market, and then we headed off in the direction of the train station. This time, there were signs to the station, so we made it in an efficient manner, taking about twenty or twenty-five minutes to get there. The train ride back took a little longer since we were not on a direct Cambridge-to-London line, so we stopped at several stations along the way. Once we got back to King’s Cross station, I asked around and we found Platform 9-3/4, the mock-up of the platform from the Harry Potter books. Most of our kids have grown up on Harry Potter, and so they were very excited to have their pictures taken there. It was fun.

We headed back to the hotel, where we got in at the very reasonable hour of 9:00. Mer and I encouraged everyone to get some rest. Many took our advice, but we did hear later that some stayed up late. Still, everyone stayed positive throughout the trip, so a few late nights must have been okay.