Around Cambridge

We spent about half a day walking around Cambridge.  Whenever we do things like that with Cooper, I'm reminded how simple his enjoyment is and how little I should stress about planning all the right things and seeing all the best places.

Here, for example, Coop spent about 5 minutes talking to this duck.  The duck quacked back.  Sounded like a very pleasant conversation:

The Cambridge city markets.  Lots of vendors selling all sorts of things---cheese, clothes, books, England souvenirs, rugs, produce.

We stopped in The Eagle pub, which opened in 1667.  During WWII, airman from the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force congregated here and left graffiti all over the bar walls and ceiling.  Then in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson announced (right in the middle of lunchtime, apparently) that they had "discovered the secret of life"---they had come up with the idea of the double helix DNA structure.

An important place.  We used the potty there.

Whipped cream AND marshmallows!

We also spent about an hour on a punting tour.  It's a flat-bottomed boat where the driver (chauffeur, he called himself) stands on the back of the boat and uses a long pole to push off the river bottom to drive and steer the boat.  You can see this type of boat down just beneath this bridge:

The tour was fantastic.  The Cam River runs along the back side of seven colleges in Cambridge, so we got a little history on those places.  And there are fabulous bridges.  This is the Bridge of Sighs, said to resemble the Bridge of Sighs in Venice.  Or at least the Queen said so, and who are we to argue...

Another duck friend:

Many of the university museums in Cambridge have free admission, so we ducked into a couple, including the Zoology museum and the Museum of Earth Sciences.  Coop was pleased.

All in all, a successful day.