Cambridge

This past week we enjoyed the company of Katie & Ann.  They both were interested in seeing one of the University towns and we had not yet been to Cambridge so it was our chosen destination.  It wasn't a very pretty day, 50s & overcast, but we we still enjoyed the town.

I had always thought that Oxford was more prestigous than Cambridge, but I quickly learned this was not the case from our visit to Cambridge.  Cambridge has been ranked #1 in the world for the last two years in the World University Rankings.  Graduates from Cambridge have also won 61 Nobel prizes.  There are too many famous graduates to list them all but a few include: Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.

There is so much history within the town and within each of the colleges.  The University system is very different from those in the US.  The University is divided into various "colleges", but they are not aligned by courses of study like they are in the US.  The colleges are self governed and have oversight of housing, undergradute teaching, social funtions, etc.  I am not by far an expert, but my impression was that the colleges are also very closely tied to tradition and social status.  Some of the more famous colleges that you may have heard of are Kings College, Trinity College and St. Johns College.

One of the traditional activities to do in Cambridge is to go punting.  Despite it being a little on the cool side Katie, Cory, Brady and I went on a punting tour.  Our punter was very entertaining and seeing the colleges from the boat was definately the highlight of the trip. Brady was really good on the boat until we had about 10 minutes left and he thought it would be fun to feed the ducks by throwing various snack foods overboard.  Fortunately all went well and everyone stayed dry.