Advertisement
Published: December 28th 2009
Uncle Sam's American Circus
this was in Leicester, not Oxford, but I had to include this all the same...I was actually kind of intrigued by seeing this there...My friend Piper studied in France this spring while I was in England. During her spring break she and a couple of her friends were coming to England and they wanted to make a stop in Oxford, so I met them there as I hadn’t yet been. It was really nice to see her after all this time. I took the train to Oxford from Leicester early in the morning so we would have all day to spend together. After arriving early, I waited at the station for her while drinking a tea. Piper and her traveling friends arrived not too much later. We started our day by making our way through the quiet streets of Oxford towards the first of the Universities. Oxford does not have just one university, but several, each with their own campus and name. Piper and I definitely wanted to see Christ Church College because of it is one of the filming locations for the Harry Potter films. We saw the where the hallways were filmed, the entry staircase, and the famous dining hall! The dining hall is definitely bigger in the films because they loop the footage to make it seem larger. The guides in
Look Familiar?
if you have ever seen Harry Potter you will know this is where the hallway scenes are filmed, if not, well you do now. the hall told us the story of Alice in Wonderland, which was inspired and written in Christ Church College. The stained glass windows even have had pictures of the characters inserted in them. The guides told some pretty good stories about the history and were really nice while they showed us around. We saw the campus grounds and the church that was onsite, which was very ornate as well. The guide in the church was very interesting as well. He was alive during WWII and told interesting personal stories.
After finishing at Christ Church we walked along a path next to the playing fields and made our way back towards the center of town. We looked around some shops before hunting for some lunch. We saw the outside of the Oxford library, the theater, and some boats punting on the river. We all ate lunch at the White Horse and enjoyed typical pub cuisine of fish and chips and burgers. We definitely went through out fare share of ketchup! The Brits don’t use as much as we Americans do and only have the packages instead of bottles on the tables, we definitely went through a bunch! After lunch we
just walked around town looking down the narrow streets and at the old architecture. On one street we ran into an unusual site; a motorcycle with a side car and a couple with a camera crew. We stopped to watch a little bit and the lady approached all of us and asked if we wanted to sit on the motorcycle. At first we didn’t really want to , but after they told us what it was all for we climbed on and got our pictures taken on the bike and in the sidecar. The couple was taking a second honeymoon and was planning to drive a similar motorcycle down the Pan-American Highway from the northern United States to South America. They were planning to stop along the way and interview couples to ask for advice and stories from other married couples. It sounded very interesting! They were trying to get a television station to sponsor them and create a show based on the trip, so if anyone sees anything like that on TV let me know!
After that afternoon we met up with some more people (friends of one of the other girls) and relaxed in a pub for
an hour before I had to leave on the train to return to Leicester. Oxford was a relaxing trip and it would have been nice to spend some more time hanging out in the parks and looking around the grounds to a few more colleges, but I had to get back to Leicester to pack in order to leave in the next few days and Piper and her friends were heading for northern England. Enjoy the pictures!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.379s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 53; dbt: 0.1053s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
