Not Just Another College Town

While waiting with baited breath to leave my humble room to hunt down some Indian cuisine for dinner, I figured I'd update with what will probably be my last picture post of my time here at King's.

On Friday, the official 'final' day of the program, I went with Mike (of 'the Carlins') to check out several things around town that I had yet to see. Amazing that I'd been here for 8 weeks and still hadn't made my way to certain places.

I started off, actually, having coffee with Abby at Indigo Cafe -- the most popular little cafe for all the King's kids, which is right down a little alleyway across the street. Had never gone, though I'd heard nothing but good things. It's possibly the quaintest, most awesome little cafe, and I can see myself having spent every morning of this programme having coffee/bagel sandwiches there with Carlin. Not to downplay the amazingness that was our time at Starbucks/Borders, but Indigo would have been perhaps a little better.

It was so great in fact, I went there this morning, alone, and had my first official English tea (with a little personal pot and everything), along with a remarkable baguette sandwich (I'll miss those in the States). How lame I am for never having had real tea before today.

I'm actually not going to post too many pics. There are tons. And tons and tons. So I'll include some Wiki-links if you want to know anything more. (This is gonna be boring and not detailed.)

First stop was Queen's College, right next to King's. I'd been there a lot, actually, 'cause I had a section for Drama there. It has some of the oldest buildings in all of Cambridge. ==>

<== Then it was off to Corpus Christi College, which is located basically right across the street from Queen's, and in between King's and Pembroke.

Finally, off to Trinity College, which was.... very grand. Not like King's. Our lawn is way nicer. But the courtyard was ginormous! The grounds were certainly bigger than ours, and you can tell that that's where all the rich kids go. Stupid Henry VIII. ==>

We sneaked out through the back of Trinity in order to try and get into St. John's College. It was interesting, 'cause you're supposed to pay to get in to each of the colleges if you're a visitor. I'm proud to say that we didn't pay to go into a single one.

St. John's presented itself as a challenge, and Mike and I were up for it. We walked all around this enormous lawn and found a little open gate way off to the side, on the other side of the river, and we high-tailed it around and walked right into St. John's. It was definitely worth the effort.

<== As I stated a while back in one of my punting videos, the back entrance to St. John's looks like a giant vagina. Nice change from all the big phalli all over the damn place.

Also, walking through the Bridge of Sighs was pretty frickin' cool. A little starstruck, not gonna lie. ==>

In leaving St. John's, we ran into some fellow PKP-ers were heading to something called Castle Mount -- this hill (one of Cambridge's only) that once had a little castle on it. Sounded good to us, so we followed suit.

It was pretty cool getting to see Cambridge from above. It is one beautiful city.

<== And can you see King's the background?!? We also explored Sidney Sussex College, which is nearer to the market area, but I didn't get any pictures. We were searching (unsuccessfully) for a bathroom.

That night, I went out with a large group of people to The Regal (cheap drinks, good music), I got kind of drunk, I ran across the front and back lawn in the dense fog (as I described in my video I posted yesterday) and it was exhilarating in way I could never really describe.

Perfect last night. Now I'm ready to get the hell out of here.

See the rest of the photos from my college excursion HERE.