Cambridge and more

Today marked the last new library of the trip, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

Cambridge in general is not particularly easy to navigate. It feels more canyon/maze-like than Oxford. I think the problem for me was that a lot of streets were only labeled on one end, and usually not the end which was where I was needing to access them.

I ended up going the wrong way a lot, and retracing steps a lot. If I hadn't been trying to make an appointment, it wouldn't have been too bad. For example, I went by here by mistake:

King's College

Finding the college library was harder than finding the university one though.

Here's the Cambridge University Library:

This is the path that leads to the CUL. Note that there is no signage. It is pretty though.

Also on the way to the CUL, and also not labeled.

I must have gone through and around the Trinity College area twice before a helpful stray kitty showed me that there was in fact a second square of the college, which was where the entrance to the library is. It was a very friendly kitty, possibly Siamese if there's a variety of the breed with all dark fur(?). Then I had to ask a person which of the various unlabeled doors was the library, since the sign that said 'Library' and pointed did not say which door, just which general direction to to head around the square. I finally made it half an hour after the library opened. The cool thing about the Wren Library (that's the Trinity College library) is that it still uses the classic old reading room for manuscript study. If I did have a picture of this, I wouldn't post it because it would have been illictly obtained. You can photograph manuscripts with permission, but there are signs outside the room saying 'No Photography'. It's possible this refers to tourists and not scholars, but still...

A final observation about Cambridge. This place has much more of a large town feel with a university off to one side, as opposed to Oxford which feels like it was a university first, then the town was built around it. For example, I never saw anything like this kind of vandalism at Oxford:

  

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the road sign says "Bat  man Road". If you look closely at the sign you can see that there was an 'e' that someone decided was not required.

Also present at Cambridge was a main street that did not run through the university. I think this most of all made Cambridge feel like less of a medieval university town, for which I forgive it exclusively on the basis of that main street containing:

That is not a coffee shop. Instead, it is the Ooshi Bubble Tea shop. One of the best so far in fact. It might even have an edge on Up...T in London because Ooshi had little bowls of flavored mochi on the tables (yes, this one actually has seating unlike many of the other bubble tea places).

Cambridge also has coffee shops. Here is the best one I tried:

It should not be overlooked simply because it shares a building with the Tourist Info office. It it actually quite good.

Tomorrow it will be back to an old haunt, the British Library, where I will review some things that I wasn't able to get to before. It's hard to believe there's less than a week left before I'll be home.