Cambridge Celebrity Sightings

So far we have seen three "celebrities" here in Cambridge. Well maybe. There is some skeptisism over our first one. The second and third happened today when Matt saw a huge crowd gathered around Great St. Mary's Church and the old Senate buildings down on King's Parade. Yesterday we had noticed that they were setting up big tents there on the green so we knew some event was happening. Matt asked someone what was going on. Turns out the Prime Minister of India, Monmohan Singh, was being conferred with an honorary degree from Cambridge. And in attendance was the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, His Royal Highness Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh. If you don't know your English royal lineages, that's the husband of Her Majesty, Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith (as she is known here).








So those were the second and third sightings. Not insignificant. More importantly they did not involve either of us embarassing ourselves, unlike in previous celebrity sighting situations. The first is still a point of controvercy because I saw them but Matt didn't. We were biking over to Fitzies and it was kind of dusky but I swear I saw Bill Gates walking on the footpath with his wife. Gates is a huge contributer to the University of Cambridge (for some reason) and a building that bears his name was not a quarter mile from the spot he was walking. Also, he was wearing a sweater with a dress shirt and tie under it, and who wears stuff like that other than Bill Gates? He was also smiling, which is such a Bill Gates thing, right? Smiling for no reason? I mean, I guess he's got like a trillion dollars, so that's a good reason to smile. Also, people don't just walk along those footpaths unless they know exactly where they're going, or they're wandering around because they're tourists and aren't from Cambridge.



In other news we went punting! Matt really liked it. It was really nice and it was a great day to do it. Some of the best views of the college can only been seen from a punt. We didn't get a chance to do it, but you can rent punts from a certain point in the River Cam where you can punt all the way down to the next village, Grantchester, stop in at the pub and come back. We want to try that sometime too.