Allons-y

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OPUS has a number of trips organized throughout the term, and the first one I was here for was on Saturday to Cardiff. We met the bus in front of Hertford College across town at 9:30am. The first stop we made was about 2 hours later at St. Fagan's National History Museum to see the exhibits on Welsh history. I had fallen asleep on the bus so I didn't see us pass the border between England and Wales, but on the way back it just looked like an ez pass toll booth (unless I missed the border again and what I think is the border was just an ez pass booth... I'm going to call it the border!) We ate prepacked sandwiches and fruit before going to explore. The museum was mostly outdoors, it reminded me of Jamestown, VA with different houses set up as they would have been centuries ago. The grounds were amazing with some "pretty pretty" landscaping, to quote a friend. (Pretty pretty is on the scale of how nice something looks, there's not pretty through astoundingly beautiful.) There were ponds, ducks, doves, an archway of tree branches, and walls covered in flowers. The roses weren't in bloom but the lavender was! There were also sheep and lambs. Some OPUS people pet them through a fence, but the sheep avoided me and walked to the center of the pen. As the time to leave was approaching, I started my keychain hunt. My collection is probably over 6 feet at this point and I intend to grow it! One shop was fairly normal, there were people shopping and salespeople selling. It was a fudge shop and we at the house might try to make some at some point! But no keychains. The shop next door was creepy. There was one saleswoman who looked almost like a wax figurine and moved just as much. No one else was in the store and again, no keychains. We left quickly. At the main shop, by the exit, there were wooden toys, books, magnets, all sorts of things! There didn't appear to be keychains, but one of the friends who was in on my mission found a small basket of them. I now have a keychain of one of the houses on the museum property. We loaded back onto the bus and we were off to Cardiff!

While we were driving through Cardiff, we saw a demonstration with people with signs and megaphones saying "refugees are welcome here." I knew the refugee crisis was significant, but I hadn't realized how ubiquitous the conversation was here. This was jarringly juxtaposed with our tour of Cardiff Castle. The wealth and extravagance of the castle was amazing to see. Amazing in the sense of wonder-inducing rather than the more typical usage. The family who owned and redecorated it had invested in coal at the right time in the right place. The rooms were gothic-styled with a lot of religious imagery. The building materials were from all over the world, Mexican, Italian, and Irish marble, English and Welsh wood-work, Egyptian inspired windows and ceilings. The family was very well-travelled and liked to show it off in this, their occasional summer house. They also had a library, which was used in 6 episodes of Doctor Who as the Doctor's library. The Marquis was very rich and hardly had to work to maintain it, so he had a lot of time for academic pursuits. He was fascinated by languages and knew I think 21 by the time he died. There are writings in various languages around the house. There's Hebrew in the rooftop garden, Aramaic, Greek, Egyptian, and others in the library, and maybe more in other rooms. The property extended well beyond the castle walls. In the early 1900s, an heir of this Marquis gave the property- castle, grounds, all of it- to the people of Cardiff. The castle has remained as close to original as possible and the grounds have not been built on. The view from the towers (there were so many steep stairs!) was spectacular and gave us a really good view of the city. The grounds beyond the walls looked like a huge forest. It almost looked out of place in a city, but I liked it. After our tour was over, we split off into small groups and explored the city. A few of us tried to find this famous stadium. We did, but we couldn't figure out how to get in. So we just wandered a bit, tried Welsh pasties, walked to the park, and enjoyed the "uncharacteristically" good weather. It has yet to rain since I have arrived so I'm beginning to get skeptical of the "bad weather" trope. But I am assured it will turn at some point and I'll miss this good weather so I'm enjoying it as long as I can. At 5:30pm we got back on the bus to come back to Oxford. Again, I fell asleep for a bit of it. I was awake to see us pass fields upon fields of gorgeous yellow flowers. The fields seemed to never end. We passed more sheep and a few horses.

We got back to Oxford around 7:30 and a couple of my housemates pointed me in the direction of the grocery stores. Grocery shopping was its own adventure! I can't wait to get to an open air food market! They have a number of them weekly in various places. But for now, in the grocery store, things are in different places and some foods are called different things. Eggplants are obergines and eggs are kept on a counter for a couple examples. But everything seemed moderately priced and I have a couple days of food for less than 11 quid. Another strange thing to note, I had to purchase the plastic bag and I wasn't expecting that. It makes sense and I will reuse it, I was just mildly surprised. I got back home and it was still very bright out, it was around 8:20 or so. The days are long but I'm liking the amount of sun! My windows face east so I see the sunrise a bit in the morning.

I'll update again soon!

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Comments

[Will]

Fantastic!