Oxford for a day

Yesterday (Friday) we had a group outing to Oxford. We had to get ourselves by tube to Paddington train station by 9:15 to take the train there all together. Paddington has a tube station and train station all at one place. The train ride was fun- it was super early and I was exhausted so I just watched everything fly by my window (backwards) and dozed off until we switched trains after about 45 mins.

Paddington

Rusty always photobombing

We got to Oxford and met up with our tourguide, Felicity.

It was a cooler and overcast day- finally the typical weather I was expecting. Our tour took us around the different college at Oxford and we learned a lot about how their university and college system works, which is really different than ours. We saw areas of New College where parts of Harry Potter were filmed which people thought was cool (I still haven't seen the movies so it didn't really mean much to me).

Oxford is GORGEOUS, basically. I love you, JMU, but you aren't as beautifully historic as this place. School is still in session, so there were students everywhere which was cool too. Prettiest place we've been. We saw their dining hall too...D Hall doesn't even compare.

Just look at how pretty Oxford is:

college chapel

college gardens

some of the girls

library

The actual university is mixed in all around the town, so there really wasn't a "campus". We went to a covered market for lunch after our tour was over and I had my first official (veggie) full English breakfast!

After lunch and awesome cookies from a really sweet old man, we headed across town to the river to go punting! Basically, punting is a long, flat, close to the water boat that a chauffeur guy pushes with a super long pole off the bottom of the river. We went four to a boat and I was with my roommate Amanda, Liz, and Griffin, and it was SO much fun. I'm so glad we didn't choose to try to do it ourselves- it was much more fun to just relax and take in all the beauty around us.

After punting, we wandered around shops on Broad Street (like in Richmond!) and ended up at The Eagle and Child- the place where my man C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien used to hang out and write! SO COOL, I couldn't stand it. I was in a place where C.S. Lewis wrote the books I love so much. Not real life.

castle we found 

hands?

or heads?

!!!

we hang out with CS Lewis

We had to hang out in Oxford until after 7 because our tickets were for an off-peak time, so we found a tavern that our punter recommended as a good experience for what Oxford is really like. We got dinner and some people got drinks and we killed time until we could take the train back!

We got back to London about 8ish or so and just hung out at the flat with most of the group all night.

Today (Saturday) Amanda and I slept in, went out and bought postcards, went back to Paperchase, went back to Covent Garden to shop and eat lunch, and then came back to the flat to write postcards and do homework and relax. We had dinner back at the flat and have just been hanging out today...who knows what's planned for tonight. The Queen's Jubilee stuff starts tomorrow- yay!