Cambridge - touring and DJing
Aug 11–12 in England ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
On Tuesday morning we went on a VoiceMap tour of Cambridge. We saw many of the most famous college, including King’s College and Trinity College. We walked along the river Cam and saw the punting boats, that are being pushed by the long pole against the bottom of the river - much like the Venetian gondolas. The tour brought us to the famous Wein library and luckily it was open to visitors - which is very random hours - 12 pm - 2 pm. The library is stunning and contains amazing copies of Newton manuscript and Winnie the Pooh hand written manuscript.
For lunch we had delicious pho at Pho Cambridge (we had it last night as well!). And at 7 pm we went to the milonga where I was DJing. It was held in a beautiful church, with amazing floor and acoustics. According to the organizer, since Cambridge population is not very religious, all the dance studios in town rent it for their events - including salsa, and swing. It was really fun - about 70 people 3.5 hrs milonga and I kept most people dancing, with more than half staying until the end.
The next morning, we needed to make our way to Heathrow. But before that we did one last VoiceMap tour - about women in Cambridge. The university didn’t allow women to attend until early 20th century, but they only started awarding degrees to women in 1949 - the first was an honorary degree to the Queen Mother. The last college in Cambridge didn’t allow woman until 1989!! It was really good tour and stories - commemorating many women that made important discoveries - my favorite was about the invention of IVF, for obvious reasons!
Fun fact - when we arrived to England, we decided to buy a VoiceMap pass for 20 tours, because it was much cheaper than buying individual tours. I thought even if we use only 10, it still made it cheaper. Well, we used all 20, plus needed one more, and only 3 of those we didn’t like and didn’t finish! True power users.
We then drove to Heathrow and stayed at an airport hotel, as we had 6:30 am flight the next morning.
Amazingly, at 7 pm there was a major solar eclipse! We didn’t really think about it before and didn’t procure the glasses. Even though it wasn’t a totality, it was still 91%, which at the maximum made the air cooler, produced crescents on the tree shadows, and resulted in a strange silvery light that happens right before the totality (my favorite part!). We stepped outside for 10-15 min of the maximum eclipse and enjoyed it - a nice woman offered us to borrow glasses and we saw that indeed sun was reduced to a very narrow crescent.
A fitting end to the very nice English adventure. Now on to Faroe Islands!Read more