Punters

On Sunday, a friend and I went to Cambridge, home to both a famous university and lots of little flat-bottomed boats. We took a guided tour of the university, of course, this time led by Stephen:


On the tour, we went by a number of the colleges and got a brief description, a history, and other assorted colorful facts. We stopped outside Trinity College, founded by King Henry VIII. Trinity College had many famous students, including Isaac Newton. As a nod to this famous alumnus, outside Trinity College is a tree grown from a cutting from a tree that might’ve been the one that dropped the apple that bonked Newton on the head, which led to our current understanding of gravity. Pretty impressive, huh?


Trinity College was also the college of Prince Charles.

King’s College is another large college. It was founded by King Henry VI, and is home to the striking Chapel. King’s College Chapel is an example of late English gothic style, and has the largest fan vault ceiling in the world. No pictures are allowed inside, but this is the outside of the Chapel:


The quintessential Cambridge activity (aside from going to school, I imagine) is punting on the River Cam. You can rent a boat and give punting a try yourself, as some of the people here did. It generally leads to poor piloting, traffic jams, minor collisions, and occasionally, people falling in the water:


So instead, we took a trip led by a more experienced punter:


From the boats, you can see the backs of many of the colleges and other attractive places and things along the river. This is the Bridge of Sighs. The guy punting our boat said that it was named that because it’s a replica of the bridge in Venice (and also because students cross it to get to their exams). We heard the guide on another boat passing by say it was named that because it’s really big.


You can make your own judgment about that.