Oxford

Today we went to Oxford.  We left the hotel at 9:00 and took the tube to Paddington (!).  From Paddington we took a train to Oxford, which took about an hour and fifteen minutes.  I was kind of sleepy (yeah, what else is new!), so I slept a bit and read my new Agatha Christie book.  Near the end we talked to a British lady sitting across from me. 

When we got to Oxford we started out for the Blackwell's bookshop, which is apparently pretty famous and Lewis and Tolkien would have bought books there.  It was enormous...it looked tiny from the outside, but when we went in the staircases went in every direction.  We went up to the fourth floor to the used book section, which was amazing.  I got another Agatha Christie (The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side), and some of the others got some old books.  They had hundred year old books for 2 pounds!!  But the fun really began on the trip down...

The lift (elevator) had an 8 person limit, and since we have 8 people in our group, we all got on.  And...it got stuck on the way down!  We had just started down from the fourth floor (which is like our fifth), and it jolted and stopped.  It was really hot in there, and we were really close together.  We started pushing the bell button and nobody answered, so we started banging on the door and yelling, and nobody answered for a few minutes.  Someone finally came and said they had to go get a key and turn something off and back on, and that it would be five to ten minutes!  We'd already been in there for at least five minutes!  It was really hot, and we just laughed a lot.  They finally got the door open and the ceiling of the third floor was about waist high and they had a little step ladder for us to get down.  The guy in charge offered us drinks for free in their coffee shop, but as we were heading out for lunch we didn't take him up on that.  It was quite the adventure. 

We got lunch at the tiniest little place I've ever been.  It was incredibly efficient.  I got a ham, mozzarella and tomato paninni.  We took our lunches and went to find a park-ish place to sit and eat.  There was none where we thought we were going, so we ended up eating in a graveyard.  Weird, I know.  Charles Williams (one of the Inklings and friend of Lewis) is buried there, and the guy who wrote The Wind in the Willows, whose name I can't remember at present.  It was a lovely place with shady trees, small clearings and tall grass.  I took a bunch of pictures.  It really was beautiful. 

We went punting on the river, which is the Thames but under a different name.  It was lovely.  We went round an island kind of thing where some school kids (high school equivalent) were playing "football".  We saw some who were either rehearsing for a play or auditioning, but I thought they were auditioning.  In their suits out under huge trees...what a fabulous idea!!  It was very beautiful.

We did a walking "tour" of Oxford, sort of.  We just got a pamphlet that told us about things and Mr. D led us around and talked about it.  It was great to see all those places.  We saw some of Oxford college, and two or three others that I can't remember the names of.  We saw places where Lewis taught and Tolkien taught and went to school.  It was wonderful. 

We had supper at the Eagle and Child, where the Inklings met to discuss their works.  It was fantabulous.  I got "Lincolnshire Whirl", which I had no idea what it was.  It only said what it was made with and what came with it, but not what it actually was!  It was a pile of mashed potatoes with little onion "rings" on top and a big (but thin) sausage wrapped up like a cinnamon bun!  It came with a bowl of gravy, and was amazing. 

After dinner we just hopped back on the train and headed home!  When we got back we had a pow-wow about tomorrow, as the kids are planning it.  We sat around in the lounge for a while and figured things out. 

Tomorrow: a walk through Hyde Park (again...unless we take the tube), the Victoria and Albert museum, The Burroghs Market, The Charles Dickens house, and High Tea at a fancy hotel.