Oxford

We were so keen to get moving today that we were downtown about an hour and a half before most places were even open.  Since we had already scoped out the places we wanted to visit today, it made the day go very smoothly.  9am on a weekday is a wonderful time to see Oxford.  There is almost no one about so it's much easier to take pictures of buildings without people in them.  And it smells amazing.  We wandered over cobbled walks until we came to a few open shops.  Once we had purchased some Oxford paraphernalia we headed over to Christ Church for our first tour.  This was a neat campus for me to visit since a few scenes from Harry Potter were filmed here like the Great Hall and the Great Staircase.  Well, actually, the great hall was based on the Great Hall at Christ Church, except Hogwarts needed four tables and here there were only three.  Not to mention the room is too small (but still huge and impressive) to work.  The film crew came in and videoed the hall from every angle and then the set crew built a duplicate (with some modifications) in an airplane hangar or something like that. The other reason they couldn't film there is because it would have been far too disruptive to student life since the room is so well used.  The staircase was the very same though.    Christ church cathedral was impressive as well, as were the grounds.  We talked to one of the stewards at the church for some time about the history and what was happening to the preachers during the Reformation.  Apparently, many of the priests stayed on at their churches when Henry VIII split from the Catholic church.  They also remained when Edward VI enforced his hyper-Protestantism and then switched back over to their Catholic services when Mary was on the throne, only to switch back over for the reign of Elizabeth I.  The steward was saying that some fled to the Continent during this time of religious upheaval, but many stayed on with their parishioners to perform the ceremonies and rights and services.  I thought that was pretty cool.

After the tour we spent some time in the Botanical Gardens.  It was such a gorgeous day and we tried hard to take some family pictures with the spire from Magdalen College Cathedral in the background.  They had all sorts of plants growing both outside and in green houses.  It was a lot of fun for us - but I think Isaiah got the most enjoyment out of our time there.  He got to crawl around on the grass, scorning his stroller.

We were pretty hungry by the time we finished with the gardens so we sat on a patch of grass and ate our tasty lunch of baguette sandwiches and ate dark millionaire shortbread.  I will attempt to make this when I get home.

Our last big "to do" was the Bodleian Library.  We weren't able to see any of the new library since it is exam time, but we were able to see a bit of the old library.  Unfortunately, and much to Keith's chagrin, we weren't able to see any books.  The Gutenberg Bible was housed just above us - but we weren't allowed!