The trip to Oxford was not bad.
Oxford is quite different from Sheffield in respect of the design of the city. The city dates back to the medieval times. Bicycle is the main transport in the city and also a healthy mixture of races. The colleges in Oxford are spread around the city but most of them are closed to the public and has huge tall walls with spikes on top and security guards guarding the entrances. However, tours are conducted for a small payment. Another thing is there are plenty of shops selling jumpers and t-shirts with the name University of Oxford printed on them. Anyone could just buy them and show it to their friends and claim that they were from Oxford Uni.
Since the city is famous for it’s historical sites, our main attractions were the historical buildings. Our first destination was Bodleian Library, which carries over 5.7 million books (almost a copy of every book published in Britain) and no one has ever been permitted to check one out. We were looking forward to see the library but unfortunately, the library was closed due to some unknown reason.
Sadly, most of the historical sites we visited were not interesting. Carfax Tower and Covered Market were the uninteresting sites. The former is just a clock tower with little architectural significant and the latter, which is just few steps away from Carfax Tower, is just a normal market and doesn?t have anything interesting.
The only thing that caught my attention for a while was a small notice written in Japanese stating “Nihon go hanashimasu” which literally means “Converse in Japanese”. It was pasted on a shop owned by a Japanese looking lady. Probably it’s a advert for hiring people who could speak Japanese.
The only interesting place we visited was Christ Church College. It?s the film site for Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland and Shadowlands.
The dining hall scene in Harry Potter was shot in the amazingly huge Dining Hall built in 1529. It also has many connections with Lewis Carroll?s book, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland. The dining hall and the people around him inspired many of his ideas. (Apparently, Alice is the daughter of the Dean (during Lewis?s days in Christ Church) and Alice’s cat Dinah inspired the Cheshire-Cat). The hall has a magnificent ceiling, of ‘hammerbeam’ construction. The portraits of many famous members of Christ Church can be seen on the wall, including a few of the thirteen Prime Ministers educated in the college.
We took couple of photos before heading to the Cathedral. Apparently, it is the smallest cathedral in the country.
While I was loitering around the staircase that leads to the dining hall, I spotted a small carving on the wall. It went something like ‘L.P.C 1864’.
By the time we finished touring Christ Church, it was dark and raining heavily. We had to cancel our visit to the museum due to insufficient time and ended up in Starbucks. We spent our remaining time in Starbucks before heading for our 3 hours journey back to Sheffield.
– 11:30PM