Yesterday I went down town to have a gander at the local tourist traps. I started off checking out the visitor's center to grab a bunch of pamphlets, and found several interesting options that will help me get further outside the city. Then I wandered around the Cathedral square for a while. It was quite busy, according to the fish and chips vendor who sold me my lunch a cruise ship hand just come in. There were many stalls selling touristy type jewelery and clothes, I passed on them for now but expect that I will probably have to go buy some things of that nature before coming back. Off to one side was a large chess board. It seems to be very popular with the locals as, over the course of eating my lunch and the wandering around some more, I saw three games played out back to back.
I think the most interesting part of the trip was visiting the old campus grounds which have been turned into a hub of arts and tourism. This is the university where Ernest Rutherford first experimented on the structure of the atom and they had a little exhibit set up that introduced his experiments and had some replicas of his apparatus. They had also preserved the cellar in which these experiments were done. It was very low with an A frame, apparently the main draw was the flat concrete floor which permitted greater accuracy than the wooden ones upstairs. As I am now getting emails from my advisers about thinking about what to do for my honours thesis project, seeing old experimentation was interesting. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take photos in the museum.
As I hinted, the rest of the campus is taken up with artistic endeavours. There are stone carving workshops, music studios, a wood turning shop, a live theater and a movie theater. There is also a candy shop that will run tours of its fudge production on Fridays, I may have to go back there at some point.
I also enjoyed the architecture of the campus, something about the stone and grass with courtyards on the outside and dark wood with tiles and stainglass on the inside appealed to me.
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