Happy Independence Day!
Up and had a nice breakfast with John. We’ve had such a nice visit in Coventry and feel refreshed and ready to walk less than two minutes to the train station and hop on a train to Oxford, England.
We arrived in Oxford and it was about a 15 minute walk from the train station to the lovely apartment that we would be staying in , that was very close to the central city. We met our Airbnb host, Mark, and their two very large, beautiful dogs, and then headed off for our Oxford adventure.
Oxford, as you may know, is the place that the first university in England, started over 1000 years ago. Our time here is going to be spent exploring the various colleges and old buildings of the university.
We quickly found a nice place to have a sandwiches for lunch, and got ready to start the first of our walking tours of Oxford. There was some chaos in trying to figure out which of the small groups we would be part of, but in the end, it was perfect that our group leader, Chris, happened to originally be from San Diego. He had been in Oxford for over 10 years, and was now a British citizen .He came here to do his doctorate in Sanskrit, and stayed around for more education and is currently studying law.
Chris was a particularly gifted storyteller and told the dramatic stories of the long ago background for the Oxford University colleges. He was also able to bring some real personal experiences as a student of the university.
This area was used extensively to film some of the Harry Potter movies, and he was able to show us some places that the filming had happened. He also used some of the information that we all knew about English schools that we learned from the Harry Potter books and films in telling us about the various colleges at Oxford .
One of the fun things we learned is Oxford was the town where the author went by the name of Lewis Carol developed and wrote the Alice in Wonderland stories. Our tour ended underneath the very tree that Lewis Carol sat under while the girl who was named Alice was up in the tree doing her math homework. Lewis Carol was a tutor and he made up the stories about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He used the nearby beautiful large meadow as inspiration. They explored the meadow together.
Besides Lewis Carroll , JR Tolkien also got his inspiration for the Hobbit here on the campus of Oxford University. And we got to see where CS Lewis got the inspiration for his Narnia books. We saw the lamppost that is prominently featured in the first book: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe . We also saw a lion on a door as well as a couple of other creatures that are in the books. It was fun to think about what a rich time, with these amazing authors were working on these classic books.
The tour was amazing and we were excited to be already soaking in some of the wonderful history of this fine place.
We walked around for a bit and found that there was a concert tonight in Christ Church cathedral. The concert was called Songs for a Summer Evening and featured a soprano and very talented pianist. In this beautiful cathedral setting, we were in the second row and had the opportunity to listen to traditional folk songs, modern pieces, and just a bunch of really fun, wonderful songs. Some of them were quite humorous. We really enjoyed being in this beautiful church.
Then it was just a five minute walk back to our flat and off to bed. We have had a great taste of Oxford.
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