Day Trip 8

Wednesday 3/24
Day Tripper number 8! Our last one. :(
Today we went to St Albans Cathedral and museum, an American WWII Memorial, and Cambridge!

First stop - St. Albans cathedral. I loved it because it has a mismatched achitectural style, very unique. It's been built and rebuilt and added to over the last 1,000 years. Part of it is ancient Roman architecture (faded murals, red stone stripes, simple) and the rest is Gothic architecture (ornate, white, stained glass). Beautiful. I have been feeling a little cathedral-ed out lately (as silly as that sounds..) but I loved St. Albans!

Roman on the left side, Gothic on the right!

Cam and I doing YMCA :)

 The grounds surrounding it were pretty too, overwhelming green and cute ponds. The geese were very friendly.Here's a sad-looking tree wanting a hug. Cam was kind enough to hug it back :)

We spent some time at the nearby Verulamium museum, which is full of artifacts of the ancient Roman civilizaion they found here. Interesting.
Our second stop was an American World War II Memorial. I loved seeing it... and I liked seeing an American flag. I felt patriotic. it was sad though... our tour guide told us sad stories. There were so many white crosses and a huge wall with the names of the missing American soldiers, and a memorial building.

Our last stop was Cambridge! I loved it. It was gorgeous! I loved seeing Oxford, but Cambridge is much more like a small old college town, with beautiful natural scenery. There are lots of fields and gardens and a river bordering the town. I saw guys "punting" - standing on a canoe-like boat and "paddling" it with a long pole. 

We toured King's College chapel, which was amazing. It's about 600 years old, with massive stained glass windows and a high vaulted ceiling.

King's College chapel

sunlight through the stained glass...

A group of us walked to the Fitzwilliam museum - which was cool. It was a hodge-podge of random ancient scultpures and art from pretty much every era, all over the world. I was pleasantly surprised. Highlights were ancient Greek and Egyptian statues, mummies, renaissance art (italian and french), classical Victorian art, even Modern art! There was also a Japanese miniature art gallery and pretty old furniture. :)

Next we went to the Lion Yard Market, which was tiny, but I found a great Cambridge sweatshirt. A group of us spent the rest of the afternoon wandering Cambridge town. It was interesting how a lot of the individual colleges were surrounded by big gates and some even had guards. I couldn't really find any cute Cambridge boys... but apparently their term just ended. I got delicious ice cream and then we coached it back to London.

i love these :)

Went to dinner at TukTuk Thai with CJ, Rachel, Jake, and Ali. Yum. The Ali and I went into every single souvenir shop on Queensway! haha that's like 10 stores. We were looking for some things... couldn't find everything but I did get Princess Diana-themed presents for my mom :)

-- And I got to skype with cassidy tonight! love ya girl xox