Travel with Me: A day in Oxford, England
June 18, 2017: Oxford, England
This was our last day of the first "leg" of our trip, when we would finally have a chance to have a proper look around our base city. Despite having lived in Oxford for four months last spring, I'm sad to say that I spent more time studying than being a tourist. But this did mean that there were so many choices for things to do! I decided to mix nostalgia and adventure by revisiting some favorite sites from my time there and seeing some new ones as well.
We began our tour of the city of dreaming spires by taking a walk to the Sheldonian Theatre, the Radcliffe Camera, and the Old Bodleian Library—the latter two where many disciplines of Oxford students go to study or check out library books. These constitute the pinnacle of architecture in Oxford (in my humble opinion) and set the tone perfectly for an afternoon exploring the various colleges that make up the university.
Next, we had wanted to go to Christ Church. As huge Harry Potter fans, we'd hoped to see Christ Church's grand stairway and the Great Hall, which both inspired replicas in Warner Bros. Studios for the film sets. However, Christ Church was closed that day for a special event, so we ticked off another college with HP connections off our list: New College. The large tree in one of the pictures below is where Malfoy was turned into a ferret by fake Mad-Eye Moody in the fourth movie, and the cloisters served as general inspiration for those at Hogwarts.
We had another funny experience here at New College that set the stage for later trials and errors: getting in. It costs money for visitors to enter the colleges' grounds, but it's free for Oxford students and alumni and one guest. Me, being a broke student last year, did not get an Oxford Alumni card that would have made this whole process a lot easier. And me, being a broke grad student this year, decided I didn't want to have to shell out £5 or so for every place we visited, which meant trying to cover up the giant expiration date on my card while letting the "guards" see my ID. My hands were shaking when we walked up to the gate, but there were so many tourists lining up to get in that he barely registered a confused look on his face before waving us through.
New College is cool for a lot of reasons. It was founded in 1379, one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, and it has the oldest dining hall in both Oxford and Cambridge. It was also built with part of the city wall, and the college made an agreement with the city to maintain it in order to have permission to build. Now, every three years, the mayor walks the length of the wall to make sure that obligation is being fulfilled.
Then, we went to the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. This is one of my favorite places in Oxford, and I have written more in depth about it here. However, this visit was a little tainted by our experience getting in. As with the colleges, the garden is free to students, but it costs a few pounds for alumni and a few more pounds for non-Oxfordians. Thinking to myself that covering up the expiration date worked so well last time that I should have no problems, I pulled the exact same routine at the register here.
This woman looked at me and said, deadpan, "Great. But you're covering up the expiration date."
I then proceeded to tell her that I left my alumni card at home, to no avail. She was having no excuses. I then asked if American students could get a discount. "With ID," she said. So I pulled out my Asbury ID (which, granted, I did graduate in May, but still). She looked at it, looked at me, then said, "Oh, 2013 [the date my ID was issued]. College is only three years..."
At this point, it was more about the principal of the thing than saving money. I argued with her for a minute about American colleges lasting four years and finally claimed victory, the lady leaving us with an unconvincing, "I guess I'll trust you..." She really wanted us to pay that extra £2.
After traipsing around the gardens and greenhouses for an hour or so, we set off to Pret A Manger to get some lunch, where I was able to get my favorite sandwich (chicken caesar bacon) for the first time in over a year. For dessert, we popped into the Covered Market to visit Ben's Cookies—where you can buy a warm, gooey triple chocolate chip cookie (or two) by weight, which tells you how indulgent they are. We toted our sandwiches and cookies over to Magdalen College for a little picnic and sightseeing.
At Magdalen, the guard saw my ID was expired because I was too scared to cover it up and get caught again, but he did not care one bit and ushered us on through. Magdalen is my favorite college for multiple reasons: C.S. Lewis was a fellow there, the landscaping is breathtaking, and Addison's Walk is perfect for a sunny afternoon stroll. We took to Addison's Walk, where it is said J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis shared inspirational conversations, and stopped alongside the canal to eat our picnic lunch with our feet dangling over the water.
After Magdalen, we popped in the Museum of Natural History, a gorgeous building with intricate carvings of plants and animals across the facade. The inside is a kaleidoscope of taxidermy animals and towering dinosaur fossils underneath a Victorian arcade.
Being so close, I couldn't resist dragging Mary on a purely selfish walk down the Marston Footpath and into Headington, the small town outside of Oxford where I lived during my time as a student there. She was only a tiny bit angry that I made her climb the giant hill up to The Vines, the house where I spent most of my time holed up writing essays.
For dinner, we ate at the Eagle and Child, where Lewis and Tolkien, along with their fellow Inklings, had lunch every Tuesday and discussed various literary subjects. Mary and I shared what we learned was way too much food for two girls: an egg, sausage, gammon, steak, two chicken breasts, mushrooms, and fries. The server even brought us our own four pint jug of water, saying, "You're clearly really hungry, so I thought you might be really thirsty."
Finally, we ended our day with a canal walk, where houseboats were docked along the bank and weeping willows cascaded their branches down towards the water.
Stay tuned for the next leg of our journey: Ireland!
If you've missed the previous installments of our travels in Boston, Brighton, Bath, or Stratford-upon-Avon, go here to catch up!