A Tour of Cambridge

Cambridge is a lovely town to visit. There are a lot of shops to look at, a few museums, the schools are nice to see and of course there's always punting on the river.

We first went to see one of the museums which had a fantastic exhibition of Japanese Art. Ben's mom really likes that type of artwork so she was really excited to go. Then we ate lunch in a nice little tea shop and chatted for awhile. But then it came time for the haggling to start so we could go punting on the river. We left this task up to Kathy who showed us how a real haggler does it and she managed to get us a great deal. I think it came out to be 5 pounds per person when they normally charge 15 pounds!

I suppose I should explain what punting is; well, punting is kind of like what you see in the pictures of Venice and the people in the boats and there's someone pushing it along with a big pole. That's what punting in Cambridge is like but apparently they'll let anyone try it. You don't need to be experienced, you just pay for a boat for a couple of hours and off you go. We opted to pay for someone who was experienced to push the boat around. A lot of times there's collisions between boats because the river can get quite crowded but our tour guide did a fantastic job. He told us some of the history of Cambridge and what the story behind some of the bridges were. You can see in the pics that not all the bridges looked the same. We also got to see exactly what you shouldn't do when your pole gets stuck in the mud. The major thing is not to hold on to it otherwise you'll be holding onto the pole while the boat continues to drift. The end result is someone splashing into the water like the poor girl in the picture. She was fine so don't worry.