(2-15)– This weekend is a fun one because we’re exploring a little bit more of England! First off is Oxford, so we woke up bright and early to catch a train for the hour-long journey. We were a little grumpy because of staying up last night but generally pretty excited. The weather seemed fine leaving London and for most of the people going, it was our first time riding the railway by train.
The station is actually pretty interesting because there are so many departure gates. It’s not anything super special– I think the one I visited in France was actually a little cooler– but it was a nice sight for the early morning. We got on the line and I sat next to a nice French woman who studied at Oxford. I took a tiny nap and read some of my book and before I even knew it we were there!
Except for a slight drizzle, the town itself wasn’t that much different or shocking at first. The one thing I noticed was that the water was really brown because of the flooding. When we walked through a bit, though, it was a lot different. The streets were a bit like Canterbury, probably because of the size, and some of the green space, like the photo below, was actually home to a tiny cemetery, which reminded me of home. There were also cool views like the alley and tree in the third photo, which we walked through to get to the Oxford Natural History Museum.
With the help of Google Maps, we found the Museum, which is a neo-Gothic style building designed by architects Benjamin Woodward and Thomas Newenham Deane. The building was completed around 1860. The adjacent and connected Pitt Rivers Museum was completed much later, around 1885, by the son of Thomas Newenham Deane. Eventually, the specimens inside the museum were moved from their homes within the varied colleges to the large collection you can visit today.
Like many museums here, there is free admission to the ONHM. Walking through the front doors reminded me of what it was like to go to the Natural History Museum in Washington D.C. for the first time when I was younger. Skeletons were lined up on the walk as if we were walking down Earth’s memory lane, glass cases full of taxidermied animals like miniature terrariums. I fell in love at first sight, just like I do with most places such as this. The building itself is beautiful, with its glass roof to let in plenty of natural light, a simple square court with cast-iron pillars, cloistered halls with columns each made out of a different British stone, and ornamental stonework (Pre-Raphelite beauty mixed with biological studies, to reinforce the purpose of the building). There’s plenty to see both here and in the Pitt Rivers Museum, such as statuary of men of science (Darwin was my favorite), a meteorite found in China that is as old as the rock we are currently standing on, and the most complete skeleton of a dodo (unfortunately, its exhibit was being repaired when I visited 😦 ) along with the 1651 Flemish painting by Jan Savery of a dodo, said to have inspired Lewis Carroll (he was, apparently, a regular visitor).
Also famous for an 1860 evolution debate, and the first-ever display of wireless topography in 1894, it was an interesting place to explore.
We walked through the museum and when everyone was done, we decided that we would use our limited time to go see some of the other cool sights. Grant was also waiting to meet up with a friend. Unfortunately, as soon as we left, the rain really started to come down, and it didn’t really stop the rest of the day. Using some really nice bricklayer paths, and not one to let the rain stop me, we forged ahead. We went towards the second largest library in Britain, the Bodleian, and saw the Divinity Room, basically an old fashioned lecture hall. We also passed the Bridge of Sighs and the Radcliffe Camera, which were both really nice structures and cool to see. They really remind you of how old this town is, and how much history is even in one single brick.
We eventually met Grant’s friend, Mike, who took us to see his college, Corpus Christi. It’s interesting to see how much of the college is formed like a monastery, each with their own chapels and cloisters to walk through. It was somewhere between an Italian villa and a church, but it definitely didn’t feel like a school. With organ music playing somewhere and a green with sprouting flowers and a view of St. Mary’s, it was really beautiful. And Mike even said that some of the other colleges are prettier in certain ways.
Mike had to run off to work, so we ended up going to see some other things. We recharged by grabbing burritos for lunch, and then stopped by the Covered Market, which was more an indoor farmer’s market than the flea market type I was expecting. There were some restaurants and prepared foods, like meat pies, and it was nice to see (its really interesting to see how communal living can be here; I feel like everyone is so disconnected at home), even though we didn’t buy anything.
Then we took another little walk (at this point, I confess, we were circling a bit) back to one of the main streets to see a pretty famous bookshop called Blackwells. one of my favorite places on the planet and somewhere I can never get bored, it’s doubly so here– since 1966, their oldest storefront includes the Norrington Room and actually harbors the largest continual span of ground dedicated to selling books, a boasted three miles of shelving.
We did a quick look inside the Museum of the History of Science, where we saw a blackboard with Einstein’s handwriting and some other crazy artifacts, but the place closed before we could really look around.
We went and grabbed food afterward at Nando’s, a really popular chain here that serves spicy dishes, mainly chicken. I had a sweet potato and butternut squash (medium spice) sandwich that was actually really good, and the others got chicken and pretty well-seasoned fries. Overall, we were pretty impressed and full, actually. Then, we started walking towards our accommodations for the night but found a bar on the way called The Four Candles with a lot of good-looking young people, so we stopped for drinks. We spent a couple hours there and hung out until we decided we should probably rest up for the next day’s activities.
We headed over to the hostel, where we almost had a roadblock (they tried to charge us a group rate even though it wasn’t mentioned on the website). The place was pretty busy, which we weren’t expecting, but it wasn’t that bad– in fact, it was pretty clean other than the smell of a lot of people living in one place– and was more like a dorm than anything. The people there all seemed pretty nice, and mostly kept to themselves. Even the bathrooms were pretty clean for being so occupied.
We all tried to rest up, even though we were outside of our comfort zone, to varying levels of success. I’d say as an experience it was a very middle ground, not too bad or too good. Nothing bad happened, which I’d call a triumph.
(2-16)– We woke up pretty early in the morning to check out. They even provided breakfast, which was nice. When we went outside, though, the rain was still going. Everything was still wet, damp, and cold. We started the day with a river walk, which was nice; there were a couple of fun little views that we found along the way.
One of the most interesting ones was Oxford Castle, which has old looking Norman style architecture and a thing called the Motte-and-Bailey Mound, which was basically a big hill to protect the building back in the day.
When it was destroyed in the English Civil War, the building was rebranded as a prison in the 18th century. It was here, in 1752, that the infamous English murderess, Mary Blandy, was hanged. However, most of the building has been destroyed or re-developed, and only select sections of the castle/prison remain.
We also found this cat, who was really friendly and only had one eye. His coat was so sleek and he had white paws and a little mustache, which added to the cute factor. He followed us around and all the way up the mound, and he even came into the castle itself. It felt a bit like he was some spirit guide or something. The castle once had a reputation for being infested with vermin, so maybe he’s just here for that reason, but I think I like the idea that the cat is the spirits of the Norman royalty and the people slain here during its years a prison. Maybe it’s even the ghosts of the mice that all the cats before this one managed to murder, who knows?
Next, we went to the Ashmolean Museum. It was the first university museum in the world and was created in 1841 to house the collection of curiosities given to the university much earlier by Elias Ashmole. It contains a huge collection of fine art and specimen, including pottery, paintings, and sculpture.
Some of my favorites include the Alfred Jewel, which came from the Viking “Watlington Hoard” found in 2015. It also included some previously rare Anglo-Saxon coins from a time when only two kings were outside Viking control: Alred the Great, King of Wessex and King Ceolwulf II of Mercia. There’s some beautiful marble Greek statuary, Egyptian artifacts, a hall of Dutch still-lifes, English portraits such as the Van Dyck (“Portrait of Elizabeth Howard”), and even some more contemporary sculpture such as “A Nice Cup of Tea?” (bottom left).
Akin to our history museums, there’s almost an impossible amount to see. I felt like I was running around trying to see as many of the cool things as possible. There was a lot to absorb, so I would say if you’re really interested, it would take a couple trips to really go to the museum. The most interesting factoid I think I found from this trip, though, was this: in December 1999, during a celebration of the millennium change, a painting valued at 3 million pounds, the View of Auvers-sur-Oise, by Cézanne, was stolen by art thieves, who climbed onto the roof using scaffolding on the adjacent building. No other paintings were stolen and it is still missing today.
Something about art theft has always fascinated me: who is skilled enough to take some of the societies most prized things? Who are the people who contract them, just to keep their stolen goods squirreled away forever? It’s fascinating what people will do to get what they want.
Then, we went to get a bite to eat and I made the executive decision to go to the Eagle and Child, a pub better known as the Bird and the Baby where, back in the day, a group of writers known as “The Inklings” would get together on Tuesday mornings and discuss their writing. The Inklings included some of Oxford’s finest, such as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, and encouraged fantasy writing. This group met informally from 1939-1962 in the Rabbit Room, cozy, small space right in the pub’s center. I can tell why they would be inspired here; it has low ceilings, two of the rooms are greenhouses, and you almost have the feeling of being underground (as if you were really in a rabbit-hole)
I got a vegetable hot pot, which was delicious and really well-spiced; other people tried an English food, meat pies, which they said were good but really heavy to eat (I mean, its pastry with a bunch of meat inside?). The food was really good, and I think everyone agreed that it was one of our favorite meals of the trip. We finished off there with a sticky toffee pudding, which was VERY sweet but pretty delicious. It was a warm, sticky jelly/pudding and cold custard, which went together nicely. I don’t think I could eat a whole one though, so I’m glad we shared it.
We spent some more time by going to see the grounds of St. Mary’s up close. It was pretty similar to the other churches of England, but respectable nonetheless. The greens were really pretty, and I’m still so shocked by the flowers coming up.
We didn’t want to pay the admission, though, so we decided to go to a coffee shop instead and wait for our train. I don’t even know what the place was called, but when we sat upstairs, a guy next to us sketched me. I asked him if I could take a picture after I got over my shock. What do you guys think, is it flattering?
We eventually made it back to our train and got lucky this time. Since it was the end of the day, most of us sat alone and could stretch out a bit. Nothing really exciting happened on the way back, although it was pretty to see the sunset in the English countryside. And of course, we were all excited when we finally got home and could take a nice warm shower and sleep in our own beds.
Just to make sure we were really tuckered out, the girls who stayed in the flat whole we were in Oxford and I decided that we would go play a round of darts before going to bed.
There’s a really nice place called Flight Club right down the street from us, and its a pretty modernized, retro-style dart bar, which was fun. With a good mix of new and old: the low lights, fancy monitors, wooden parlor walls and touch-sensitive boards, its a good way to spend an hour. I never realized I could get so competitive about throwing things at a wall. I ended up placing third, but still.
When we got home, I pretty much fell asleep right away. It was a long weekend already, and we still had another trip– Cambridge– planned the next day.
Ethan Knox 
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