Cambridge, England, for a Day

We took the train from King's Cross expecting to arrive in Cambridge around 9:30am but due to trouble at Alexandria Palace, we didn't arrive until 11:30am.

After taking the one hour City Sightseeing bus tour (highly recommended) from the train station, we chose to return to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is a small museum full of extremely interesting exhibits. The day we visited in October 2005 there was a special exhibit of illuminated texts.

The texts were beautiful but no photographs were allowed. The Maccalesfield Psalter was the center piece of the exhibit and was very beautiful. However the highlight of the exhibit for us was one of the Book of Hours (a prayer book) made especially for Mary de Bohun, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, on the occasion of her marriage. Humphrey and Mary de Bohun are direct ascendants of our family . Seeing this beautiful, small but exquisitely decorated Book of Hours, knowing this was made for and handled by a relative added a special meaning to the exhibit.

Another particularly meaningful exhibit was the Handel Bookcase. The bookcase, standing against the wall in the porcelain figure room, appears almost an afterthought, as if the museum people didn't really know where to put it. It is filled with 37 original manuscripts including The Messiah. I felt as if I had died and gone to Heaven.