STONEHENGE (and the Jurassic Coast)

Last weekend we spent a lot of days hiking around looking at old rocks.  It was pretty chill.  You can read all my angsty, vaguely academic thoughts on the experience on my other blog for the summer school course I'm taking!! (Shameless plug.)

www.finchesinthechapel.blogspot.com 

One adventure: Swimming in a sports bra and shorts out toward a natural rock arch, which I then climbed upon, nearly bashing my body in the process.  I've got the scratches to prove it. 

Friendz

Thought I'd do a post with some pics of some friends. :)  All these photos are from Edinburgh.

Antonio!

Robert!

Sabrina!

City of Dreams

We took a day trip to London to do a medical history tour, and as we walked along the Thames, I almost wanted to cry with happiness.  Modern meets ancient, speedy meets staid, every language and belief tossed in the mix, and on those rare days with sun, everything shines.  I'd work any job and stay in any flat just to live in this city.

 

The Most Beautiful College Museum in the Whole World

And that's saying something, because I'm a staunch supporter of Harvard's museum coterie.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the primary art museum for the U. of Cambridge, and its holdings are immense (and intense!).  We're talking Rodin, Seurat, Pissarro, Cezanne, Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Monet, Delacroix, Rossetti, Canaletto, Tintoretto, Titian, Millais, a very important ancient Egyptian collection, and so much more!!

Woolf, Forster, Brooke, and Tea

Some time ago we biked over to a little place called Grantchester to have cream tea at The Orchard, a restaurant with tables in, you guessed it, an orchard.  Rupert Brooke held court here from 1909 to 1914, and many friends visited, like Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Augustus John, and Keynes.  They went on walking tours and canoed along the River Cam into Cambridge.  They were known as the Grantchester Group (Woolf called this gang the "Neo Pagans," contrasting them from London's Bloomsbury Group).  Here are other esteemed visitors to The Orchard:

Pretending we're pioneering early-20th-century intellects:

 

A swan, named either Norbert or Charon.

Lazing by the river with our former group babysitter Ingrida (our lovely TF Myrna has since arrived to fill that role, as well as academic supporter!) and her Portuguese friend Evo.

A bit of poetry to close out a lovely day, with piping hot scones and the smoothest clotted cream ever.  I had elderflower soda and was happy with the world.

"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" by Rupert Brooke

(excerpt)

I only know that you may lie

Day-long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower- lulled in sleepy grass,

Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,

Until the centuries blend and blur

In Grantchester, in Grantchester...

Historical Cambridge

Throwback to a couple weeks ago!  Our class went on a walking tour of Cambridge.

Trinity College.

Where Newton performed his sound experiments!

On the roof of Great St. Mary's Church, overlooking the city.

The Market Square.

Also the Watson, Crick, & Franklin lab!

Cool.

Monument to George Washington's daddy in Little St. Mary's church.

Peterhouse, the oldest college at Cambridge.  (Professor Durant is in the hat!)

York!

A little stop on the way back from Edinburgh to the city where some argue psychiatry was founded (the York Retreat) became a trip through a madhouse when we discovered it was horse-racing day!  Bachelor and bachelorette parties swarmed the place, men wore white shirts, women wore fascinators (those fancy half-hat things) and cocktail dresses, and us surprisingly-outnumbered tourists wedged our way through to the cathedral.

I unintentionally dressed for the occasion!

The lovely cathedral, with huge stained-glass windows.