Cambridge, UK

My husband had to go to Cambridge, UK, this week to do some talking on a researchers congress and asked me to go with him. It was a while ago we went on a trip with just the two of us, so after changing some shifts at work I could go with him and booked a flight. 

Cambridge, as you may know, is a university town and mainly consists of colleges. It's the place where professor Stephen Hawking spend his last years, where Darwin and Newton studied (among lots of other famous scientists) and where Crick and Watson came up with the idea of the helix molecule structure of DNA. 

Cambridge isn't very large and I think most of the residents aren't students, but tourists. It's very crowded in the streets, sidewalks are full of slow walking people and to pass them you have to watch out very carefully, since cars drive on the left side of the road instead of right.

Nonetheless, Cambridge is a friendly town with a lot of history and a lot of things to see.

On the first day we just walked around town to orientate and see all the different colleges. The most beautiful are St John's and King's in my opinion. We walked the streets and the courts of some of the colleges. I wanted to visit some libraries, but in the end we just visited one, the Wren Library. But, it had a first edition copy of the Philosophea Naturalis Principia Mathematica, with Newton's own handwritten notes in it, so that made up a lot. Unfortunately it wasn't allowed to take pictures in the library.

After the library we went to a punting station to do the Cam by boat. We choosed the guided tour, just to get some information about Cambridge. And because it seemed rather heavy duty to make the boat move by sticking a punt in the water and push.

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The second day I did the sight seeing on my own, while my husband attended the congress. I went to the backs again, the backs meaning the back of the colleges, because I thought this to be the most beautiful and peaceful site of Cambridge. But even if you go there be prepared to see lots of people.

I visited Great St Mary's Chapel to climb the tower and look over the little city, bought presents for my daughters and went to the Museum of Zoology. I just like to read about the features of all different life forms.
 

Look at those beautifully prepared wings!

The Komodo Dragon is one of my most favorite animals.

But there are a couple of creatures that make me shiver in disgust and this museum all had them.

 

The lamprey, which looks like something from a horror movie, just a beak with sharp teeth in a circle, row after row.

The nest that wasps make. Don't know, just gives me shivers when I look at it.

The Surinam toad, who has lots of holes in its back with eggs in it. Suddenly the back begins to move and from the holes young toads are launced. Just thinking about it makes the hair in my neck standing up.

And human kind, the only specie that destroys its own environment and that of all other life on this planet. The only organism that wants more, more, more than it will ever need and is merciless to get it. When you think about that you can hardly imagine that we are evolved out of other creatures, any creature on this planet.  

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The third day I went to the Botanical Garden. Such a lovely place. Peaceful and quiet. Wonderful smells. Great sights. I loved it and spend hours in the garden. If I have to recommend something in Cambridge I would say: go the the Botanical Garden.

After the garden I had just a couple of hours left before my husband would come to the hotel and I would have to catch the train to the airport.
I went to the Polar Museum, because that was closest to the hotel. Otherwise I would never have gone there, I think. The museum mostly tells about the search for a way around the continents on the north side of the earth and about the barren journey's to the north and south pole. The conditions are harsh even now, let alone in the ages when high quality equipments weren't invented yet.
Because I like to read stories of great historic explorers I had read about Franklin, Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen years ago and to see some of the actual stuff they used on their journeys here on display, made the museum much more interesting than I thought it would be when I stepped inside.  

And then my time was up. My husband had to stay a day longer for a banquet in the evening, with colleagues and other researchers, but I had to go home due to lack of human resources at my own job.