Stratford upon Avon and Oxford

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We woke to another dreary, rainy day, but tubed and trained our way to Stratford Upon Avon through the lush English countryside. We trugged into town from the train station, and were grateful the rain stopped as we turned the corner to "Shakespeare's Birthplace" (museum and house where he was born and raised)--just behind a half dozen high school tour groups from Italy! The place had a bit of a Disneyesque atmosphere (probaby the hordes of tourists contributed to this impression), but we all felt it was worth seeing. The rooms in the house gave a good sense of daily life of the period. Unfortunately, because of all the waiting in line and the limited train schedules on Sunday, that was all we had time to see of Stratford before hopping on our train to Oxford.

There we were met by the lovely Miriam Marlier (daughter of friends from SLO) who is in Oxford this summer doing research as part of her job at JPL in Pasadena. Since it was Sunday, many of the landmarks were closed, so we had a more customized tour. We began at Christ Church College, where we viewed the dining hall that doubled as the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films--or so the signs said... It looked a lot bigger and more impressive in the films, thanks to computer enhancement, I suppose. We looked through the Christ Church Cathedral and walked through some of the dorm quad areas, then wandered through the city, looking at more of the colleges and landmark buildings (Bodelian Library, Radcliffe Camera), climbed to the top of the steeple at St. Mary Virgin Church for a 360 degree view of the city, and wandered along the Cherwell River, watching people struggling to maneuver their "punts" with long poles, all the while dodging the off and on rain. Finally, we "tucked in" to a delicious Indian dinner at a lovely restaurant before slogging back to the train, saying goodbye to our charming guide, and returning to London. On the train back we could hear many people on cell phones, trying to keep track of what was going on in the Wimbleton finals. We realized that while we were as close as we'd ever been to Center Court, we'd not seen a single moment of the match!

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