Day 1: Oxford

The afternoon we arrived in Oxford (the official symbol of which is an ox fording a river) it rained a little bit. It never rained again for the remainder of the vacation. I would like to thank whoever is in charge of the weather for a superb performance.

Oxford is, as you might know, a college town. Dozens of them, actually, comprising the university. And they all look like Masterpiece Theatre, with a classic gothic building surrounding an open green quad. Come to think of it, the shops are big on selling Inspector Morse guidebooks, for those Mystery fans who have watched the shows (or read the books) so many times they want to see every crook and nanny where there were all shot. Whatever. I like Morse (and Lewis) as much as the next person, provided the next person isn’t the type to have bought one of those books. I gather they also give a Harry Potter tour of the burg, because some of the movies were shot there, not because Hogwarts is one of the colleges. Again, whatever. On the other hand, it is nice to roam around in a town where, once, the Reverend Dodgson taught mathematics and wrote a fanciful book or two (I really wanted a Tenniel Cheshire cat ball cap, but alas, none was found), as did JRRT and assorted others. Some stars are still roaming around, for that matter, but I didn’t see any of them.

I have read of Oxford, which is certainly a one-industry town, as being very much a place where you are either a part of It or you’re not, i.e., a student/tutor or a schlub servicing students/tutors. Perhaps. I mean, who wants to live in Hollywood and work at a gas station? As a tourist, there is no question that access to the town industry is severely limited, unless one connects up with a guide, an abundant enough resource. Under these auspices, we saw chapels and dining halls and quads and all sorts of things inside the walls, which made us feel very learned. You even get to see people toddling about in their gowns and whatnot, looking also very learned. There were various graduations while we were there, so in addition to these students there were also tons of proud parents. Very lah-di-dah. Our guide, a Lebanese immigrant who was very impressed by the fact that there were not only non-Brits but also women in both the student body and in positions of power, could not pronounce the word epitome correctly, but otherwise he did a good job, so our sightseeing tour was quite enjoyable.

There are various museums and whatnot, the most famous of which is the Ashmolean. This is named after Elias Ashmole. Let me tell you: if poor Elias were around today, the first thing he’d do is change his last name. Thank God I don’t have to announce that one at award ceremonies! Anyhow, the Ashmolean is actually a serendipitous collection of collections rather than a straightforward museum as such, and it’s quite fun. Things like a Stradivarius (plus step-by-step instructions on how to make one), paintings, old scraps of ancient pots and pans, you name it. Not terribly demanding, but worth a trip.

We spend a lot of time planning our meals on vacation. We don’t haunt the fanciest restaurants, but we do keep an eye out as we roam for likely dinner candidates, and we do enjoy our sit-downs at the end of a long day on our feet seeing this and that (and often outright hiking hither and yon). In Oxford there’s a new Jamie Oliver restaurant (called Jamie’s, naturally) that everyone was lined up for our first night (they didn’t take rezzes for twosomes), and we were intrigued but when I looked it up online (I had wireless in all the hotels for the duration) they said it was overrated so we decided not to go the next night, but then we changed our minds since it wasn’t so crowded that Sunday and it was one of the best meals we had over the vacation. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet! (Including this.)