Three Months in Albion

21.06.12 (Cambridge, UK) - I walk to the city centre at about noon, sign up for a walking tour, and in the time before it begins find a sandwich shop near the tourist information building. I do my best not to look conspicuously American, to be a proper young lad, in the sandwich shop, but as soon as I open my mouth all of my pretending goes out the window. I've been so conditioned by Seattle restaurants that when I finish my sandwich I pick up my plate and look for a place to set it. I head to the girls working behind the register.

"Is there a bus tray?" I ask.

Blank looks. "What?"

"A place I can set this," I correct myself.

"What is it you're trying to do?"

One of the girls comes over and grabs my plate and says thank you. I skulk off, completely embarrassed. So much for the proper young lad routine.

The walking tour begins and our guide takes us through the city. I'll be quite honest: I don't remember half of what she said so that I can repeat it. I'll try to review some of the more important sites. We saw the oldest building in Cambridge (pictured below).

It's the tower at St. Bennet's, built during the reign of Cnut the Great. Apparently, many of the people during the time kept drinking from a pump right beside the church. Unfortunately, the water they were drawing was also on the ground where they buried their dead. Bacteria in the water killed a great many people before they figured out what the problem was.

We heard about one of the oldest and most famous pubs in Cambridge: The Eagle. Diana will remember this place as the one that gave us the enormous cheese platter on our last Cambridge outing. Watson and Crick announced that they'd unraveled DNA here, discovering the double helix, and American and English soldiers during World War II etched their service numbers and names into the ceilings.















King's College Chapel was erected by Henry VI, but construction was halted when the War of the Roses (a bunch of non-consecutive conflicts between the Houses of Lancaster and York) started up.

The chapel wasn't finished until the reign of Henry VIII, whose egomaniacal streak had him insert a flurry of Tudor iconography in the chapel annex Some of the pictures are below.

Outside the chapel, waiting to get in.

The stained glass windows took 30 years to complete. The roof only took 3.

This place is simply huge.

Dragons and dogs in the chapel annex

The fan-vaulted ceilings of King's College Chapel

The Tudor rose

A good view of the Tudor crown and the coat of arms of Henry 's mother Margaret Beaufort.

Cambridge is right in the middle of its May Ball season, as classes rent out the college grounds and throw a bunch of parties. The goofy half-dome (pictured below) is just one of the venues for the high-school graduates. This one is the grounds of King's College.

This good idea against the rain doesn't do much for the grounds' historic fifteenth century allure, does it? This is the end of a walking tour that I began just after 1pm that took me around the historic buildings. Here are some other random photos of places I went.

This thing's a clock. The three gold rippling rings  have LEDs  that tell the time of day. The grasshopper on the top supposedly eats time (its mouth opens and closes as it walks on top of the clock).

The caption on the laboratory, above.

Don't even try it.

Just outside King's College Chapel.

Don't know what this sundial was a part of, the tour guide lady didn't say...

After the good tour, I return to the Barlas's house and have an early dinner. Then I turn on the television and watch the Portugal v. Czech Republic game while sipping my tea. The game is actually a close contest and at the half it's still even nil-nil. (I won't spoil the rest, let's just say Ronaldo is really looking for that goal.) Berfin returns home from a day-trip to the London Zoo. She talks to Nurten for a while in Turkish and seems exhausted. 

At about 10pm, I ask if there's a local market where I can buy contact solution, and Nurten suggests Boots, says she's heading that way in a few minutes to her friend's place, and asks if I'd like to go part-way with her. I ask if it's safe this time of night and she says yes. I don't bring my camera (in case I get mugged), and I begin to escort her down the street. It's brisk but not chilly. We head down Victoria Ave and over a bridge and then to a roundabout where she says she's going to turn right but that I'm going to the left. She works hard at her English telling me that it's down that way and on the right. Alright, I say, I can find it. 

"You will be alright?" she says. "You can find your way back?"

"Yes, it's just down that way and then to the left," I say. I'd been paying very close attention, not because it was that difficult to find my way back, but because of the idea of walking alone after 10pm in a place I don't know very well was not on the top of my to-do list. I head in the direction specified, hands in my jacket pocket, and my eyes peeled for this Boots place. I keep walking for what seems like five minutes or more and I finally spot a promising area, which resembles American outlet mall areas--Circuit City, Ross, and Home Depot equivalents.

I spot the Boots, a pharmacy that has the words "Midnight Pharmacy" written below the name, but there's nobody in the parking lot. Great, I think. The parking lot is so empty and the street beside it seems infrequently driven. It's all sorts of creepy. This is turning out just like in those violent gangster films. Someone's going to be hanging out down here and want to know why I decided to come invade their turf. I peer left and right as I approach the Boots. 

But no such gang presents theirselves. I find out that the main store is closed at 8pm, but you can get your prescription filled until midnight. No help to me, I turn around and walk back toward the roundabout...

There's no bad ending to this story; I make it back safely and find Berfin watching MTV. After awhile her father Bayram gets home and we watch Jackie Chan in "The Shinjuku Incident" before I head to bed.