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Cambridge and Oxford

On May 1st we went to Cambridge (again, for me). We got there and immediately went up Great St. Mary’s church tower—not with a full peal ringing beneath us, though.

Then we went to Trinity College, where we looked around the quad and then the library.

I may have been literally drooling by the time we left. Then we were politely asked not to sit on the grass. Walked over to the Round Church, where we would be meeting later, and then split for lunch.

Our art history class went to Kettle’s Yard after lunch. As a museum it wasn’t very spectacular but it was a really nice house. Of course I looked at all the books on the shelves. I was supposed to meet Emily, Julia, and Jessica at a tea shop because we were planning on staying for Evensong at King’s College Chapel. They weren’t there yet so I poked around the market for a bit and resisted buying any secondhand books. We met up and wandered around for a bit before heading over to the chapel. That was really amazing—we did get the boys choir. The music was a little more modern than I was expecting but it was still a wonderful experience. We got back to London about 7:30 and had dinner near King’s Cross.

The next day Emily and I went to Oxford. We took a coach and got there in about an hour. It was pretty much lunchtime when we arrived so we stopped and got lunch at a delicious Vietnamese place. We went to Christ Church but it was closed so we went to the Bodleian Library instead.

Their tour was a bit expensive and long so we opted for the free exhibition, which happened to be on the British choral tradition. They had: Rutter’s “The Lord Bless You and Keep You,” Handel’s conduction score for “Messiah,” the oldest extant copy of Tallis’s “Spem in Alium,” and the manuscript of one of the songs we had heard at King’s College the day before. The whole experience there was absolutely amazing.

We went back to Christ Church, stopping to take pictures of Lincoln College through the gate, and looked at the college while we waited for the cathedral to open.

Lincoln College
Someone was having their wedding in the cathedral. We were wondering why there was a white car in the middle of the quad so we asked a porter who said, “There might be a wedding on, mighten’t there?”

When it opened, we went inside the cathedral. There circumstances lead me to exclaim, “Oh, woops! I stepped on John Locke.”

The cathedral had amazing stained glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones, who was one of the second-generation Pre-Raphaelites.

More pictures:
Cambridge

Oxford

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