For all the ducks i' the river: go to, go to

Alright, so now we've finally reached Wednesday.  We went to Cambridge for the day via the train at King's Cross Station.  And you should all know what else is at King's Cross Station (or else I don't know how we became friends).  That's right!  Platform 9 3/4!  The actual platform thing that they have, which is not actually between platforms nine and ten, is under construction and won't be fixed until the Olympics next year, but they have a fake picture of a brick wall with a trolley coming out of it instead of the real brick wall with the trolley.

I put my purse in the trolley, so I'm pushing my own things through the wall!  The lighting's really weird though.

We didn't have much time there though because we had to catch our train to Cambridge.  Yeah, so we took our train ride through the countryside, which was nice, but I liked the countryside better by bus.  It was neat though, because we were able to joke about how we were taking a train from King's Cross station, which of course meant that we were going to Hogwarts.

Well, we got to Cambridge and bought delicious lunch (some random Mexican place that was really really good) and then a bunch of us went to the Christopher Wren library there where they have, among other things, a lock of Newton's hair along with his notes for his book about calculus, a Guttenburg Bible, one of the First Folio Shakespeare books, and the writings of Paul from 800 A.D.  It was really really neat, but they didn't let us take any pictures, so I'm afraid that I haven't any to share with you.  

After the library we met back up with our group to tour the King's College chapel and go punting down the Cam river.  In case you were wondering, Cambridge comes literally from the idea of a bridge over the Cam river.  Cam-bridge.

The chapel was really neat.  There were dragons and wolfhounds all over the half of it that was built during the Tudor reign, and then on the other half it was almost completely plain.  The best part was the ceiling though.  That was absolutely magnificent.  It was done by Christopher Wren (remember he's the one who built St. Paul's) and was really cool.   

Punting is done in these low boats and basically what you do is take a really long pole and push off from the bottom of the river with it and use it to steer.  It was really actually rather neat.  Which really means that it was my favorite part of the whole day.

Here we are in our boat.

We all took turns punting down the river.  The hardest part was getting the pole out of the water so that you could put it back in to get a good push off of it.  I got the hang of the steering fairly quickly, but it was really hard to do because without the proper velocity you've got to account for steering a different way, which is where I got into problems.  It was totally fun though, and I loved it.  There were tons of ducks in the river too, and they just swam along right next to us, close enough to reach out and touch (although I didn't).  There's a picture of my punting around here somewhere, but it wasn't on my camera.  If I find it I'll put it up.

After punting we stopped by the Cambridge University Press bookstore, which we were told is the oldest bookstore in the world.  I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, but they've definitely remodeled since then.  It was basically the Cambridge equivalent of the BYU Bookstore, top floor.  It had a neat spiral staircase in it though, and it really hit home to me that I was at Cambridge.  

Ta da!  Books!

Yeah, so after that we wandered around for a bit, bought some pasties for dinner, found a bathroom, that sort of a thing until it was time for the King's College Choir evensong.  For those of you who don't know (and I was recently among that number, so don't feel too awful) this is the men's choir that puts on an absolutely amazing Christmas concert every year.  How could we NOT go listen to them in person in the very chapel where they always perform?  

Evensong was really amazing.  Their voices just filled that chapel and I think it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.  Really just amazing.  It was the perfect way to end our time in Cambridge, because after that we headed back to the train station to catch a train home.