The High-and-Mighty Trinity and Other Cambridge Adventures

So one of the highlights of the past few weeks in Cambridge has been the opportunity to go into Trinity College, the richest and (according to the one member of the college I know) best college in all of Cambridge. Supposedly they have as much money as the rest of the 31 Cambridge colleges combined. NBD. Also, at one point in time it was rumored that you could walk from Cambridge to London/Oxford (depending on whom you ask) solely on land owned by Trinity. In short, Trinity=big deal. Unfortunately, the college is not open to visitors this summer because they are doing some major renovations. We, the lucky students of PKP with all our hook-ups, were granted access by having a PhD student give us a literary tour of the place. We walked in past the grumpy porters on a strange boardwalk-type thing I have walked past a thousand times and entered the Great Court:



This place was pretty awesome. It had the grandiose-ness of King's but was somehow more welcoming... in an austere "We're better than you because we're Trinity" kind of way. In the movie Chariots of Fire, this is where the race was supposed to have taken place. In reality, tho movie was filmed at Eton, but the actual event happened here. You are supposed to start running around the court at the first strike of the bell at midday and finish running around the court before it strikes 12. Quite the feat, I now understand. Anyway, we made our way around Trinity, hearing about all of the famous alumni. Notables included Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Lord Byron and Prince Charles of Wales. We then climbed the stairs into the Wren library, designed by Christopher Wren of St. Paul's Cathedral fame. Inside they had the original handwritten notebook of A. A Milne where he first wrote "Winnie the Pooh," Some of Lord Byron's things, and some of Newton's notebooks, as well as a lock of his her (weird). The building itself was beautiful, the woodwork was intricate and awesome. Basically, the Library made the whole tour worth it (as I am generally not the biggest fan of guided tours). Here are some shots of the library:

Basically, I agree that Trinity is pretty cool.

In other news, we've had a few weekend trips to London. More on that later. Mir van.