I told Andy to just leave me in the Blackwell bookshop in Oxford. Hey, there’s coffee and food at the cafe, a bathroom on the top floor, and enough books to last me several lifetimes. Especially since many of the books were in Latin, which would take me awhile to learn. Can I please be reincarnated as an Oxford student?

Needless to say, Oxford was lovely. It FELT and LOOKED like Oxford, which was very satisfying. I hate going somewhere with high expectations, only to find that the destination is better in my head then in reality (like Buckingham Palace, which was underwhelming). The buildings were old and medieval, with narrow alleyways leading to pubs where the likes of C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, Lewis Carroll, and the guy who wrote Wind in the Willows would drink.

Andy and I took the train to Oxford this morning, which takes about an hour and a half. Paddington Station was fun, and I enjoyed seeing some English countryside and listening to my iPod (The Beatles sound better in England, by the way).  Andy actually read a book, which is unusual for him. I’d like to think I’m rubbing off on him. We hiked from the train station up to the city center and headed straight to the Eagle and Child for lunch. This is the pub where the Inklings met on Tuesdays, and we sat where they used to sit and discuss things like… Lord of the Rings and Narnia. We had cream tea, yummy lemonaide, and a cheese plate that included Stilton, which made me feel close to Winston Churchill (it was his favorite).

From there we followed the signs (very well marked) to Christ Church, where we saw the dining hall where the first two Harry Potter movies were filmed, and where several nods to Alice in Wonderland are hidden. Lewis Carroll taught here, and we saw where he got his inspiration for the rabbit hole, the cheshire cat, and other such things. There is a shop across the street where the real little Alice used to buy candy, and the shop is mentioned in the books and an original book illustration is based on the shop. 

We checked out the Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum, the Bridge of Sighs, and finally Blackwell’s bookshop. The bookshop looked rather small and disappointing when we first entered, but once we walked in a bit, we realized that it was about 5 floors of every book you can imagine. We made sure to stop in the reference book section and pay our respects to the Oxford English Dictionary.

We returned to find Marie safe and sound in our room, so we headed out to St. Paul’s to eat at a wine bar with a view of the cathedral. We stopped on our way home for gelato and now we are gearing up for a very early morning (bus leaves at 7:30 am).