Oxford

Last Saturday we took the train out to Oxford. I am feeling like we are running out of weekends to explore England and it was at the top of my list. I looked at a calendar and we are in Texas for all of July, August we will be here, Sept/Early Oct we have visitors and hopefully a trip to Spain and then by the time we get to November it will be cold and I will not want to haul my large self around! So I am trying to get a master list of sights we have to see when we can fit them in. We have a friend who went to school in Oxford so she sent a great guide to see Oxford for a first timer. Summer is here and that means tourist season is here! It was absolutely packed but we were able to see some of the highlights.

We started at the Bodleian Library, all of the tours were sold out but we were able to go to the exhibit for the King James Bible translation. It was fascinating to hear about the history, politics and how much work and revisions it took to get what we have today. They had a few different reprints, one of which they called the "wicked bible" since they forgot the "not" in "thou shalt not commit adultery". Unfortunately they did not allow pictures but this is right outside the entrance.

Many of the colleges offer tours, this was the Christ Church tour and this is the eating hall. It is actually the hall used for the Harry Potter film! We forgot our good camera but it isnt the camera's fault it looks so small - it really is!! They can only fit 3 tables across, it really is cinema magic that they could make it look huge and fit all four houses.

It is still in use and we were there an hour before they opened for dinner. This is way classier than the Cannon Center I had at BYU.

Close to where Dumbledore sat, Hadley spent the whole day fascinated by the kids around her and rarely would look at me and the camera!

Lewis Carroll attended this college and there are little Alice in Wonderland symbols all over the hall. In this window at the eating hall you can see some of the characters in the stained glass - Alice is in the upper left pane at the bottom left corner and the Dodo bird is opposite in the upper right pane, bottom right corner. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are hard to see but they flank the shield in the middle of the bottom left pane. The queen and mad hatter are at the bottom, and next over is the white rabbit, there is a turtle and I cant quite remember the ones in the right hand lower pane! I really wish we hadn't forgotten the good camera! The guide they handed out talked about some of the inspiration for the book, like Dinah the cat that a little girl Alice played with just outside his office, he was a professor of Mathematics.

Main Square

Our little walker was not thrilled to be in the stroller all day and spent a good chunk walking around holding onto her daddy's hand. I loved watching them but it made me really happy we were able to go to Paris and all the museums when she hadn't figured out how to move.

The next stop on the tour was the cathedral, it had beautiful stained glass everywhere and gorgeous ceilings. It was really interesting to be at a University with such rich history and tradition. We saw all of these students dressed up in black robes, but not graduate robes. I asked our friends the next day what they meant, I guess when you sit for your final exams you must wear the traditional clothes and dress up for the week - this was really different that the sweats and ponytail I wore my entire week of finals!

Our final stop was a tiny museum with beautiful artwork, unfortunately about halfway through Hadley figured out there was an echo. We had to take a quick lap to glance at everything and then take our excited jabberer outside! We finished the day at an actual burger place, it is hard to find great burgers here but these were excellent and it made this food obsessed lady very happy! There was so much more to see so if there is time we hope to make it back!