Unlike American cities, Cambridge has windy streets with lots of roundabouts. The crosswalks are often not at the intersections, and the paths often have gates to restrain the cows. Plus, the square courts feature perfect grass although you can’t walk on it. As you can imagine, it’s different here. The differences can be strange and annoying at first, but sometimes they’re worth a good walk’s thought.
I live in Jesus College (at the top). The engineering department (not shown) is at the bottom left, beneath the Fitzwilliam museum. Good walk.
Long walks become really long walks when you get lost in Cambridge. Yes, the windy roads are annoying at first, but that’s just the beginning. The real culprit is the road nomenclature. You can walk two blocks and the road name changes! I’m serious. I think the postal service just uses zip codes.
This peculiarity of road names deserves some attention. What I can make of it is that historically as the roads merged each college wanted to have their own name for the road. As a result, Magdalene Street runs into Bridge Street which quickly turns into Sidney Street, then St Andrew’s Street and finally Regent Street. Similarly Trinity Street becomes King’s Parade and finally Trumpington Street. (See the how the road names change on the map.) As a result, street names are almost useless.
It’s odd how expecting street names to help navigate has actually caused problems. Usually the street names aren’t even posted. By expecting decent street naming I can get lost looking for a particular street names that are not easy to find. I should probably instead use approximate distance or significant buildings. I’d guess that most of the British don’t even know what their roads are called. One person gave me directions saying, “I don’t know the road’s name, but you go till [this bar] and it’ll be on your right.” Different, but it worked.
On second thought, who needs street names? With the modern-day GPS, we might not even need them. I keep imagining that Cambridge has somehow undergone a revolution in the last ten years due to the moble phone. Now people can finally find where they are going in new areas, and so the mobile phone may have welcomed more foreign visitors. However, since I don’t have a cell phone right now – which means no GPS – let me just say that I’ve unintentionally toured lots of Cambridge and gotten plenty of exercise. =)
In the process of lots of walking, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time just looking at the surroundings. You have to use your time somehow, and I found the names of the stores to be quite striking. They’re just ironic. It might just be that there are hundreds of little stores, so there are more funny names that stand out, but I think you’ll agree that some store names are just funny.
Try to guess what each store sells:
1. What does the store called Boots sell? Anything but boots- it’s a pharmacy.
2. What does the store called Plyones sell? Anything but phones, it’s a little’s girls store.
3. How about C@mpkins Future Vision? It sells cameras.
4. Hard one: what does Sam Smiley sell? Sam Smiley sells rolls, drinks and cakes.
5. What does MAC sell? Makeup.
6. What does Ted Baker sell? Men’s clothes.
7. Thomas Cook? It’s a bookstore.
8. There’s a store called Bank. It sells clothing.
9. Terminal D? More clothing.
10. The Carphone Warehouse? It sells phones.
There is also a Chocolate Hotel (not a hotel, just sells chocolate), Virgin Media (phones), Superdry Store (Clothing, probably jackets), Miss Selfridge (women’s clothing), Jigsaw (more clothing), Waterstones (a bookstore), and Bills (a restaurant). Different than what we might expect, but they all – I’m sure – have a story.
I transition quickly to one more thing I often see on the walks: beggars.
Similar to at Harvard Square, there are a lot of beggars. But the beggars here have more style. For instance, there’s this guy who sits in a trash can with a guitar sticking out the side, and he plays really well. He even has his own Facebook page.
That’s all for now. I’m afraid this week was a heavy workload and the remaining two weeks of term are looking super busy! I guess I’ll use the long walks to relax as much as possible!
iHouse@MIT 