Cambridge: Swords, fans and pounamu

Last game of the footy season. Dad went to watch Grimsby Town play Braintree (and win, I might add). That meant a whole day to myself and without anything important to do, I asked Dad to drop me off in Cambridge on the way so I could spend the day exploring.

Cambridge is a lovely little city - big parks, a pretty town centre and packed full of museums courtesy of Cambridge University. I began the day (or rather, afternoon, by the time I got there) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the arts and antiquities museum. First stop this wonderful piece from the palaces at Nimrud.

Especially interesting given the pounding that Nimrud has taken from the twats calling themselves ISIS. I doubt there's a whole lot left of the palace this particular chap came from.

The Fitzwilliam, unlike some of the big museums in London, is pretty easy to navigate, although I'd recommend picking up a floor plan on your way in. There's a couple of little galleries stuck out of the way that I would have missed without it. The first of these is the Rothschild Gallery, with its collection of beautiful medieval and Renaissance art. Among my favourite pieces were this piece of Anglo-Saxon metalwork. I love this style.

Also, this amazing book of music - it's huge so that all the members of a choir could read from it at once.

The second of the Fitzwilliam's little hidden galleries is the Sasakawa Fan Gallery. I've been meaning to visit the Fan Museum in Greenwich for a while, just because it seems like such a strange thing to have a museum of, so this gallery will have to do for now. Some really beautiful old fans from the Far East, plus some rather more flouncy ones from later European courts and high society.

I'm torn on my favourite items though. I fell rather in love with the Korean pottery gallery, having not seen this style in any museum I've visited before. The colour is beautiful and the little pots shaped like squashes are lovely.

The tomboy-ish part of my brain though loved the miniature Royal Armouries they've got going on near the cafe. Who doesn't love a good sword?

The aforementioned cafe does some good lunch options, although a bit expensive. That said, I wasn't going to turn down a falafel scotch egg. Two of my favourite things combined. Yum. From the Fitzwilliam, I headed back towards the town centre to check out the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.

There's a wonderful selection of local artefacts on the ground floor, plus a small display of Inuit items, including this beautiful little bear's head carving.

The upper two floors follow a more traditional museum pattern - big cases with relatively little information about the objects within. There's an amazing totem pole, although I neglected to take note of where it came from. Oops. There's also some great displays about the people of the South Pacific, at which point I went on my now traditional hunt for something made of pounamu. This is the super tough jade found on New Zealand's South Island that's used to make both jewellery and weapons that are a match for iron. I succeeded. I present to you a beautiful pounamu club.

Bit more substantial than my little pounamu manaia pendant!

The museum closed at 4:30pm, so I had a while to kill before Dad came back to get me. Took myself off for a wander around the city. Kings College.

St Botolph's Church. Lovely building and its churchyard looked so quiet and tranquil.

That led me into one of the city's winding back streets with these beautiful old buildings, presumably part of the University.

 

And then I spent a while sitting on a bench near Darwin College, watching the world go by. A lovely day. I need to go back - there's a whole bunch of other museums still to check out.

Been to Cambridge? Got a favourite museum? Do share!

Best Souvenirs: Trinkets or Memories

My favourite necklace broke a few weeks ago. It's a little pounamu (jade) pendant of a Maori spirit called a Manaia, strung on a black cord. The pendant is the same sort of design as this.

The Manaia is fine, but the cord, thanks to me wearing it all but a couple of days since we got back from New Zealand last August, finally gave up and snapped.

This was awful. I found myself going to fiddle with it and finding it wasn't there. It's oddly upsetting. I had to order some more cord but until it arrived I fell back on another old favourite - a little pewter tablet with the Ogham script for the letter M embossed on it. I bought it from Killarney National Park, I think - it came from somewhere around there at least. Back then I was still in my slightly hippie phase and was very much into magic and runes and all that. I bought it more for its slightly mystical feel than for the fact that Ogham is an interesting old script. Still, it's a nice little reminder of my university field trip to Ireland.

And that got me thinking. What are the best souvenirs? Little trinkets like my Manaia and Ogham necklaces? Or the beautiful scarf my mum brought me back from Morocco?

Or is it the memories? The sort of things my New Zealand posts are filled with? Silly things like my sister having to scrape ice from the rental car with a tiny piece of wood because we didn't have a proper scraper. And when I fell in the sea at the very end of our kayaking trip. Claire getting dive bombed by a seagull trying to steal her chips. My mum being used as a portable branch by the squirrel monkeys at IPR.

But wait, there's more - what about the postcards written home? My sister and I have developed this little tradition where we write one a day to our parents and, depending on where we are, either post them all in batches or hang onto them until we get back and then hand them over. They're great fun and they're a great way of jotting down the silly things that happen that sometimes we've forgotten by the time we get home.

There's the photos too. I took over 3000 photos just on our 3 week trip to New Zealand. Some of them I know I'll look at in future and go "what the hell was going on there?" And then I'll remember and it'll be brilliant. Like this one where we're all drenched and soggy from when we decided to take a walk in Tongariro National Park and got attacked by ice rain.

Or this one where we went to Hobbiton and I won a leaf from Bilbo's tree (and Amy and Claire pinched some).

I've only just realised that those pictures show us going from Mordor to the Shire. Oh yeah.

Anyway, I think I've come to the conclusion - the inevitable conclusion - that the memories are the best bit (obviously), closely followed by the photos and the journals/blogs/random scribblings. But those little trinkets... well, I'm still amazed how lost I initially felt without my Manaia. It's a tangible link with New Zealand. The only thing that really counts against such things is how much they weigh and where they come from. By which I mean I would never buy anything huge, because luggage allowance and where possible I'd want to buy something made in the country I was visiting. What's the point in buying something as a reminder of a trip if it's made in (for the sake of argument) China?

...at which point I realise that the little fluffy puffin I brought back from Iceland was made in China. It's cute though. I named him Sigi after our unhinged Northern Lights guide.

"English speaking people crouch down so the others copy you"

Long blog title is long.

The day began with a trip to a shop to finally buy some jade, given that we'd been saying for most of the trip that we wanted some. Jade was bought. I acquired a manaia, which is a little protective spirit type thing. He's called Nessie because it looks a bit like a sea monster.

Then we had a very short trip down to Lake Rotorua which stunk of eggs courtesy of it being a volcanic lake. There was also a posing seagull.

Then came the drive to Waitomo. The sat-nav insisted on sending us down the back roads again, but we'd got used to it by that point.

Waitomo was damp. First up we headed to Ruakuri Cave. 2 hour walking tour ensued, which took in some amazing formations and awesome little glowworms. I have no good pics of the glowworms, but here's some half-decent photos of fun geology.

At one point Meg, our guide, turned all the lights out and we went through the passage conga style. Amy and Claire walked into a post. The ceiling was covered in glowworms and they were reflected in the river below the path. Actually, the Maori name for glowworms means something like stars reflected in water.

After Ruakuri, we headed down to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. This started with a little walk around with an excellent guide (who's name, unfortunately, I didn't catch). At one point, seeing that a lot of the group weren't following her instructions to be able to see the glowworms, she loudly announced "English speaking people, crouch down so the others copy you." It made us smile.

Walking section over, we headed down to a little jetty on the Waitomo River within the cave and took a little boat ride into the dark. This was amazing. The ceiling was absolutely covered in glowworms, the only light in the cave. The guide steered the boat using cables strung across the cave and finally, after going round in circles straining our necks to gawp at the pretties, we headed out along the river to another jetty. All the awesome.

And then came the drive to Auckland. Which was fine until we got to Auckland proper and the sat-nav was incredibly unhelpful. We had to drive round in circles looking for the hostel for ages. Not fun. We do not like driving in Auckland.