We decided to walk from the train station to the flat we are staying in (courtesy of Air B&B). It was a good decision! The walk was largely along the Oxford Canal which was incredibly beautiful!
My favourite thing about the canal was the ducks. They were very tame and not afraid at all. The also had ducklings! So darling!
When we got to the flat there was a bit of confusion about the location of the key and how to open the door (have I mentioned my hatred of British locks? They are awful!) but after some sandwich related blood sugar relief we dropped our stuff off and headed back out. I walked down to Oxford Castle, past some really neat sights.
The Castle is a bit strange. There's not a lot of castle left. The most prominent thing is a large grassy mound where the original castle, built over a thousand years ago from wood, would have stood. I will return to this interesting mound.
There is also the county hall, which is a beautiful building on part of the original castle grounds.
Finally there are a few pieces of the castle itself (built of stone slightly later than the very first one was)
There is a tour of the castle that, from it's advertising, somewhat resembles the format of the York Dungeon that I recently visited. I decided not to do this but did pay £1 for access to walk to the top of the grassy mound. Talking with the girl in the store she explained to me that under the mound was originally a well though it has long since dried up. When they did an archaeological dig in 2003 they discovered 64 skeletons in there from the 16th century. This didn't stop me from exploring the mound however, or going partway into the well vault (which was admittedly super creepy!)
I would have enjoyed my time on top of the mount more if it weren't for the group of obnoxious European teenagers being incredibly annoying. However it was still quite neat to sit and look out at the city.
After coming down from the mound I wandered around for a bit. I made my way eventually to the Ashmolean Museum as that is where Laura was and it was the only museum open past 5. It was absolutely amazing! The first exhibit I entered was of ancient statues collected by one Duke with the story of how he built his collection and how it ended up at Oxford. From there I found my way to exhibits about Greece, Cyprus, Crete, the Near East, and Rome. My favourite part however was a room with casts of famous statues that I remember studying in my Greek/Roman Art & Architecture Class. It was so neat to see them!
Laura came and found me in that room and we went off to find dinner. We went to Jamie's Italian, one of the Jamie Oliver restaurants. It was very delicious.
Friday my priority was the Museum of the History of Science. Since it didn't open until noon I had time in the morning to fill. I had a few ideas but began the day with a bit of wandering in the general direction of the tourist stuff.
I found my way to Christchurch Cathedral. It is interesting because it is both a cathedral and the college parish. It was a beautiful building, but instead of paying to go in (I had a goal of being cheap, it fell through drastically later in the day alas) I opted to walk through Christchurch Meadow. The entrance is a beautifully manicured set of gardens called the War Memorial Gardens, then it leads to actual meadows. They were a wonderful piece of country inside the city.
I had a slight moment of juvenile grumpiness after that last picture when my camera's batteries died. I blame lack of sleep for the fact I got quite grumpy and pouty for about three minutes before I kicked myself in the butt and just went and got new batteries. From there I walked over to the Oxford Botanic Garden. It is quite a pretty botanical garden. I was getting hungry enough that I was very tempted to steal from the citrus trees. I wandered through for a while before finding a bench by a lovely fountain to sit and enjoy the picnic lunch I had purchased in the morning. It was quite peaceful and enjoyable, at least until an aggressive wasp decided that it wanted my apple far more than I did.
After leaving the botanic gardens I walked over to the part of town that the museum was in. As it wasn't noon yet I took some pictures of nearby buildings and then hung out on a bench for a while.
The museum was amazing. I love old scientific instruments for their intricacy and ornamentation. I was certainly not disappointed in here. There were tons of beautiful compasses, astrolabes, microscopes, sectants, chemistry equipment, and photography items. It was amazing.
That being said the most exciting part of the museum to a physics nerd such as myself is the Einstein chalkboard. Basically it is what it says: a chalkboard preserved after being used by Einstein when he visited as a guest lecturer. I had to stop and pay homage here.
After the museum I was finding myself very dehydrated so I stopped and got cream tea (tea + scones with clotted cream and jam) at a cute little cafe along with about four glasses of water. On the way to the cafe Google led me through an amazing little alley that I would never have noticed on my own:
I decided to continue being nerdy and walked over to the Natural History Museum. It was closed, but you could still access the Pitt Rivers Museum through it. This was a good decision I made as Pitt Rivers is amazing!
It is called a museum of anthropology and world archaeology. It is different from other museums however as items are not sorted by origin but by use. The idea is to showcase how cultures all over the world came up with similar or different items for the same purposes. It is beautifully set up with all the items having hand-written labels. I wandered around like a kid in a candy store admiring the beautifully set up displays. It is like a giant emporium of history and has an amazing feel to it. I feel like I could spend days wandering contentedly through here admiring items. However I was pretty burnt out from touristing by this point so met Laura and headed back to the train station. So ended our lovely pair of days in Oxford!
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