Long, Long Road to Oxford

Yesterday we left our house around 8:30 am, were dropped off at the BART station by a friend, and took BART all the way to SFO. I don't think I've done that before, although John is quite familiar with that route.

The wait at the airport and the flight (direct to Heathrow) were uneventful. I managed about three hours of sleep on the flight, so if this post is more incoherent than usual, you know why.

When we landed at Heathrow, we proceeded through border control and got on a bus to Oxford. "The Airline" bus is a nice enough way to travel--free wifi on the bus.

Once we reached the Oxford bus station, we climbed in a cab for the ride to St. Hugh's College. Apparently not all of the cab drivers in Oxford know where everything is--we were delivered instead to Wolfson College, which is fortunately only a few blocks from St. Hugh's. Once we hiked to St. Hugh's, we discovered that our rooms wouldn't be ready until 2:00 (it was shortly after 10:00 at this time). We left our luggage there and went out to get something to eat, since "breakfast" on the plane had been five hours ago.

Next stop was the Zoology department, where we met up with John's colleague Jeya (who arranged the housing for us). After chatting for a bit, John and I spent some time walking around Oxford:







We had lunch at St. Hugh's with Jeya, then split up for a while. While John talked with some of his colleagues, Jeya's husband Malcolm took me on an inside tour of St. John's College:





Next stop was a tour of the Museum of Natural History.



After the behind-the-scenes tour we had last year in Florence, we were looking forward to seeing this museum, too. Let's just say that this tour was a bit of a disappointment: the curator who took us around was an entomologist who clearly loves his job, but the four of us on the tour did not share his interest in drawer after drawer of insects... (It didn't help that jet lag was most definitely catching up with me, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open even while I was standing upright.)

A quick nap and a shower at St. Hugh's managed to restore both of us enough to get through the rest of the day. Jeya had originally invited us to dine at St. John's college, but since it's not term time there were not enough people signed up for dinner to be served. Instead, she cooked us a fabulous meal at her house.