Ye Olde Oxfordshire

8 February, 2014

My little group of American aliens and I were lucky enough to find a group on campus that’s dedicated to foreign students. Often times they will organize trips to commonly frequented areas of the country (or of continental Europe!) and offer them to members of the group at a great price. So naturally, when the opportunity arose to visit Oxford, we jumped at the chance.

Our bus coach departed quite early in the morning, so the ride over there consisted mostly of a mass napping session, punctuated by a few waking minutes in which we saw some of the truly horrible flooding that has been plaguing the UK for the last month. 

When we arrived in Oxfordshire, we had to sort out a few navigational hiccups and therefore got to campus a little later than had originally been planned. But before long, we had met up with our scheduled tour guide and were off to see the sights!

Our tour guide started us off with a great history lesson, ending in quite a factual statement that addressed the real reason almost all of us were (or maybe just I was) actually there, “But in all these years of history, by far the most important events have occurred in the last 15 years… some of the Harry Potter movies were filmed here.” 

I know, we laughed too.

After that she took us around to Divinity Hall, the Radcliffe Camera, Christ’s Church and much, much more.

When we were outside of Divinity Hall, she asked, “Does anyone know what this building was used for in the Harry Potter movies?”

To which I responded immediately and perhaps too excitedly, “The Hospital Wing!”

“Wow… you’re the first person who’s known that right away!”

Yupp… I’m pretty proud of that. I might be making a t-shirt. (joking!)

Another fun fact about Oxford; it was the home of JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis, who were actually friends and discussed their books with each other whilst in the city. 

Back in the day, the two authors made their great friendship official and named it the Inkling’s writers’ group. The club met in the Eagle and Child pub’s private ‘Rabbit Room’ every Tuesday to discuss their work. Apparently there is now a club on the Oxford campus called the Inkling’s writers’ group that still meets in that pub on Tuesdays.

We were fortunate enough to actually go into the pub for a pint and, creepy pub sign aside, it was actually a pretty fun place.

After our quick pit stop, it was back to the bus.

Did I mention flooding? I mean, this was hardly a flood, but it does kinda show how bad it was other places.

On our way back, the bus broke down no less than 4 times and, at one point, we had to wait for another coach to come pick us up. It really wasn’t that bad, but became more of a joke between the exhausted passengers every time we had to pull over. What really matters is that we got home safely and were able to collapse into bed with great memories from a truly amazing day.