Being a tourist

Yesterday I put away my dissertation and embraced my inner tourist. A friend of mine from Toronto, Andrew, stopped by my flat at around noon, ready to soak in the Cambridge charm. With brains in our heads and shoes on our feet, we headed into the city centre in search of lunch.

Our growling tummies were no match for
Cambridge’s beauty—even on a tourist filled Saturday. It is almost hard to know where to look, although I recommend periodically looking at the streets, so you don’t get hit by a car or bike whilst gawking at the buildings.

After much walking and excited chatter, we settled on an Italian place by the river. A bottle of red, some good food, and watching punters on the river seemed like a good plan. And it was.

After lunch, we decided to head over to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Now, there was a straightforward way to the museum from our lunch place, but I decided that I wanted to take Andrew the long way, the way that included my really pretty walk to work. Unbeknownst to Andrew, I had every intention of marching him through the scholar’s garden and the fellow’s garden at Clare (since they aren’t open when I am walking to and from work) and marching him past the cows at Kings (because that still makes me laugh). Good thing

Andrew is a very obliging sort of guy, since I was a little on the bossy side when it came to where we were going to go.

The Fitzwilliam is a seriously impressive museum and we didn’t have nearly enough time to see it. Bossy Little Miss Me decided that we would begin with the Rothschild collection, which conveniently took us past cabinet after cabinet of the history of ceramics, silver, porcelain, and other bits of crockery. Andrew indulged my passion for teapots and teacups, bless his heart.

The Rothschild collection was amazing and had plenty of appeal for both of us. It was handy to go with a medievalist who reads Latin and knows some palaeography. Andrew was pleased as punch to read aloud and discuss the incredible texts on display. You would think that other people would want to hear Andrew read out loud, but no. The few people that wandered in quickly wandered out again. Unfortunately, we assumed the familiar spine-destroying peering at manuscripts position for too long, because after about 10 minutes (at least) of reading and discussion, the lights went out. For a split second, I panicked, thinking that somehow we had managed to miss the announcement that the museum was closing. Of course, I promptly had visions of having to make the humiliating call my boss Alison, explaining to her that in all my ridiculous enthusiasm I managed to get locked into the museum and she would have to come to rescue us.

We soon discovered that the lights are set up with a motion sensor, so they go off when there is no movement. Clearly, the room isn’t set up for over-zealous historians!

After the Rothschild collection, we bought some postcards at the museum store and then dashed off to see the three William Blake pieces they had on display.
By the time we got to the room with the Blakes, the stairwell to the balcony where they were located was closed.

The security woman, seeing how excited we were to see the Blakes, opened up the stairwell so Andrew and I could climb the steep and twisting staircase to our destination. It was well worth the scary stairwell to see the creepy paintings!

After the Fitzwilliam, we were off to Fitzbillie’s for some legendary Chelsea buns (apparently a bit of a Cambridge institution). We decided to take our sweet buns to Jesus Greens. Along the way, we fell victim to an acute case of the stupids and managed to get trapped at Gonville Caius College. We sort of knew we weren’t supposed to go through the gates, but we did anyhow and then got locked in. Now, Andrew is an former US Marine, so I had visions of how Andrew and I would execute our great escape. Of course, my vision of the great escape involved Andrew scaling walls or gates and MacGyvering the gate's lock. Even my wild imagination doesn't allow for the possibility of me scaling the gate. Such a thing would certainly result in impaling myself on the spikes, and dangling helpless like a fool. Of course, my great escape vision ends badly, with the police coming to get us because we were fiddling with locked gates, and having to make the humiliating call Alison (who is a fellow of Gonville Caius) to bail us out of jail. Sensible Andrew took less dramatic measures that my imagination predicted, and called the porter. We were soon released. I have now learned my lesson, and will not go into places I know I shouldn’t.

We made our way to Jesus Greens where we were able to watch
some people play cricket as we ate ourselves into a diabetic coma.

After Chelsea buns and cricket, we made our way to where Andrew was staying to move his stuff into his new B&B, which was conveniently on the way to the pub where we had a pint in the late afternoon sun. Still not finished being tourists, we headed back to the city centre to take some cheesy touristy shots of ourselves.

I should mention at this point that neither Andrew nor I were happy with our hair that day, so these photos have an extra element of comedy.

After all the walking and picture taking, we grabbed some Mexican takeout and headed back to my place so Andrew could check his email. All and all, a very very good day indeed!