Old Universities and Shakespeare

Yes, I am currently in Wales, and yes there's only 2 weeks until I come home, but I'm not going to post about that. It's time that I talked about Cambridge, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Oxford!

So, first I went to Cambridge. I took the map the hostel gave me and started wandering around. I was mostly just impressed by how old all the buildings are, and that basically the whole city is the University. It's not this enclosed, sectioned off campus that you normally think of. Cambridge (and Oxford) uses the collegiate system, which means you belong to a college within the University. I don't completely understand it... but it obviously works for them. Also, both Cambridge and Oxford were founded about 800 years ago. My university is celebrating 50 years this year, kind of made me put things into perspective.

One of the highlights of Cambridge was finding the college my great-grandfather graduated from in 1933 - Pembroke College. And luckily, it was one of the colleges that is free to go into and look around! Most of the others, I guess the more famous ones, make you pay a couple pounds to go in.

King's College, known for it's choir broadcasts at Christmas

Queens' College - it always has a Queen as a patron

The river behind the colleges, with punts

Pembroke College

Next, I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare's hometown. Somehow I managed to pick a time between shows, so I didn't actually get to go see a play while I was there. I literally missed it by a day. I did go to most of the houses associated with Shakespeare, the ones in town at least. His birthplace obviously, the house his daughter owned, and the house his granddaughter owned. I also went to the church where Shakespeare and many of his family are buried.

Shakespeare's childhood home

The house on the left is where Shakespeare's granddaughter lived, and the space on the right is where Shakespeare's final house was

Shakespeare's Grave

Finally, I went back to Oxford. I did some more looking at colleges, specifically the ones where Lewis Carroll, and JRR Tolkien worked. I did want to go to the one where C.S. Lewis worked, but it was farther out, and pouring rain at the time... I also visited Alice in Wonderland's sweet shop to have a look around. I rounded out my evening by going to an A cappella concert put on by some guys from St. Andrew's University in Scotland, The Other Guys.

Christ Church College - Where Lewis Carroll worked, and where some of Harry Potter was filmed!

I then set off to visit with a bunch of relatives, this time on my Mum's side!