Historic Oxford

We had breakfast this morning with Jeya at St. Hugh's: a typical English breakfast of bacon, eggs (fried), tomato, mushrooms, hash browns, and toast.

After breakfast our first stop was the Bodleian Library, to buy tickets for a tour. While waiting for the tour to begin, we stopped at Blackwell's to pick up some light reading



The Bodleian Library tour started at the Divinity School:





Duke Humphrey's Library was the most interesting part, and of course the one that didn't permit photography.

Next stop was Christ Church College. Unfortunately, the Hall was closed for lunch, but we did see the cathedral:



For lunch, we stopped at The Eagle & Child, the place where Tolkien and C.S Lewis used to hang out:



John had fish and chips, and I had Cumberland sausages and mashed potatoes:




After lunch, we hiked back to St. Hugh's to collect our luggage.



We took a cab back to the bus station. We seem to be 0/2 in terms of Oxford cab drivers: this one tried to take us to the train station instead of the bus station! Fortunately, we were paying attention, and once he realized his mistake he turned the meter off and apologized profusely.

John sat with our bags at the bus station while I dashed back to Christ Church College to see the Hall. There were a lot more people there than there had been at lunch time.



We finally made it onto the bus, and headed for London. We are staying at the Cartref House, a cute little B&B in Belgravia. We're in Room 8 on the top floor (52 steps to the lobby, then five more down to the street.) For dinner, we went down the street and dined at the Ebury Wine Bar. I forgot the camera, but John had pork and green peppercorn terrine and chips with mayonnaise. I had a roasted-vegetable tart with salad. Delicious!

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.