Last Wednesday, classes were canceled and all the Broad Curriculum students piled on a bus for the 2-hour drive to Oxford. Our tour guide, called a “Blue Badge”, gave us all kinds of historical information about the town of Oxford on the way. Blue Badge guides are specially trained tour guides, and it is their professional job to show off London to visitors. They know everything about the city, from history to pop culture. Ours made sure to point out some of the Harry Potter-related landmarks, so that was appreciated.
When we arrived in Oxford we first visited Christchurch College. Fun fact I did not know until Wednesday: there is no actual “Oxford University” in the sense of an independent, physical building. Oxford is actually made up of many small colleges, such as Christchurch, but it is not really even an umbrella institution. It is called Oxford University because that is basically what makes up the town, and together all of these learning institutions function independently, but are collectively referred to as Oxford University. See, just visiting Oxford makes you smarter!
Christchurch College was beautiful! We were also able to go inside the Cathedral, which had a prayer chapel and actually reminded me a lot of a much much smaller Westminster Abbey. The biggest highlight though, was…get ready Potter fans…The Great Hall!! This is the dining room for Christchurch students and the inspiration for the Great Hall scenes in all the HP movies. I couldn’t help but be amazed—it looks exactly the same. There is a high table for the faculty, and the long tables and benches for students, with portraits lining the hall all around. The only thing missing was the enchanted ceiling As if that wasn’t awesome enough, the steps leading up to the Great Hall are the actual steps that Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) walks down in the movies to greet the new students. Basically, I had to keep reminding myself that there are other purposes to Oxford and Christchurch besides serving as a movie set. Still really cool though!
After visiting the college we took a short walking tour through the rest of downtown Oxford, which is all of about 1/3 mile. We saw a couple more of the colleges in Oxford, as well as the martyrs’ memorial, which pays tribute to Protestant martyrs who were burned in Oxford during the Reformation. We were then set free to roam about and eat lunch before heading on to the Cotswolds. We chose to eat at a famous pub called the Eagle and Child. In a room called the Rabbit Room, authors and theologians such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to meet here and discuss literature, religion, and probably other less-serious topics of life, dubbing themselves The Inklings. For someone who is a HUGE Lewis fan, this was a really awesome experience for me. And the place itself was actually very cool! It was dark and small, like all traditional English pubs, and had really great food, plus my new favorite thing—strawberry cider.
After lunch we got back on the bus and headed for a little village called Bourton-on-the-Water. It’s part of a region called The Cotswolds, which is made up of a bunch of tiny villages and towns. If you’ve ever seen a Thomas Kinkade painting (the one of a little cottage with flowers and candlelights), then you can picture what Bourton looks like. I’m also pretty certain that our group constituted the entire youth population of Bourton for the day. But there are a lot of cute shops and a small river that runs through the center of town under scenic bridges and trees. We didn’t stay too long and we mostly just walked around (and bought candy), but it was fun getting to see something that is polar opposite of London, but still English.
Tomorrow we leave on a weekend trip to Cornwall, in western England. As soon as we are back we’ll update again with a post about some more sight-seeing and our trip to Edinburgh! There is so much left to share with everyone, but hopefully these glimpses have been enough to get you through until we can share everything in person We miss everyone but are looking forward to living up our last 2 and a half weeks as expatriates!
Cheers,
Ashlyn & Sarah
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