Wondering The Streets of Oxford

  Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Saturday, August 9, 2008

Back Alley

      This morning we were up at 7am and headed downstairs for our complimentary breakfast. It's a very basic menu with only a couple options but you don't expect much from a B&B. They had a buffet line that had cereals, yogurt, fruit salad, and oats to mix with yogurt. There was also fresh squeezed orange juice. We ordered our meals and coffee and got more instant coffee. Really missing the perked coffee as you can't find it anywhere around here. The breakfast was amazing and we made sure we would be up every morning to have some. Considering it's included in the price of the room you should be there anyway but it was good enough to make the extra effort.
 

Gondola On The River

     After breakfast we headed up to our room to get cleaned up and ready for the day. It was drizzling a mist like rain outside but we decided to go for a walk anyway. We didn't want to take the buses as we wanted to see some of the town so we looked at the map and started walking towards the city center. We had only really seen commercial yesterday so a walk through the residential was really cool as we finally got to see the houses and living conditions of the town. The house's are crammed together very close almost like the doll houses of lakeridge only every single one is built different. You really don't see two houses that look the same ever as they are all unique. However do to the cramped nature they also don't really have front yards. They have a "yard" about the size of two cars parked there and most of them actually do park there. There is no grass and usually just rocks or cement in front of the house which takes some getting used to. There is very little street parking and usually when there is you have to park ¾ of your car on the sidewalk with only two tires on the road.
 

More Towers

     They are also very fence crazy here. There is no cutting threw parks or yards or anything as every single building here has a fence around it. And I mean EVERY building. Most of the time that's all you see is fences as all the houses half 4-5 foot walls around them and the parks all have gated towering walls around them with the odd entrance here and there. We figure it's probably something to do with security and privacy as there front windows are only about 10 feet from the sidewalk and when you could see over the walls you could see right into their house.
 

The Mammoth Tree

    While we were walking down the street there was a forest beside us and yet we were still in the middle of the city and we eventually stumbled onto a walking path leading into it. We had nowhere to go or do really so we headed down it. What we found was amazing; all the trees here have a diameter of over 6 feet. They are massive trees and it would take 4 people connected hand to hand to wrap around it. We took some pictures and carried on only to slowly realize that this was not an isolated incident. In fact almost every single tree in the city is well over 4 feet in diameter. Possibly due to the higher oxygen levels from all the parks and trees around and never ending rain they might grow a lot bigger but most look like they had just been here for a long long time. Even when you were walking downtown it was not uncommon for the trees there to be massive towering beasts all over.
 

The Gates of Southpark

     We got back on the road and stumbled onto a park called "Southpark" of all things and headed in saying we would cut threw it to see what it was like. Well it was massive, looking at the map it is about ½ to ¾ of a mile wide and around ¼ mile in height. You could get a football game like nobody's business going in here and have a regulation size field with room to spare.  There were tree 'pods' if you will all over where they all grouped together, it was also rimmed with tree's but for the most part it was all wide open green grass. There was also workout areas scattered about the park where if you were going for a morning jog you could stop. Some main areas we saw were bars for chin-ups or dips or what not. There were even some benches for doing sit-ups both inclined and flat. This was only one of the hundreds of parks located in the city too. They were everywhere in varying sizes and I would even go as far as to say that parks accounted for ¼ of the city size. Most of the churches downtown all had massive courtyards enclosed in the middle of them as well so there was defiantly no abundance of green areas around.
 

Southpark In Rain

     Being in the middle of a large park with not a lot of tree cover would have been beautiful on most days but the mist rain was starting to turn into real rain so we headed to the edges to try and get some shelter from the trees. Not that it really did a lot of good as we were slowly getting wetter and wetter. We eventually found our way out of the park and stopped under some trees that we figured would provide us some shelter but by this point it was too late. We were pretty well drenched from head to toe and the clothes were starting to stick. Someone had said to us that you would be in England for two days before we bought umbrellas and low and behold this was our second day and boy were they right. There hasn't been a day go by yet in which it didn't rain at some point in varying amounts of downpour.  Our new mission, find a place to buy umbrella's.
 

Some Tower

     We stopped in a novelty shop and picked up some £3 umbrellas. At the time we wanted cheap because we were still homeless and wasting a lot of money on living. Having not locked down a place to live yet we weren't too sure how far we would have to stretch our money so we went bagger styles. Something we would regret later. There is a reason they came up with the phrase " You get what you pay for". None the less at the time they worked and while we were already soaked they prevented us from getting more wet.
 

St. Mary Church 3

     We carried on with our random wanderings and stumbled onto "St. Mary's the Virgin Church" . We decided to head in to get out of the rain for a while and try to dry off and wow was it gorgeous. I'm sure you have seen pictures before of the churches of Europe and it was spot on to what you would expect. Large stain glass windows, huge organ, high cathedral ceilings, crazy architecture on the pillars and walls, everything you would come to expect from an old church. We took some pictures and will upload them shortly as words can't describe what you would see. There was a donation area where you could offer 30p and light a candle for the fallen. Scott and I both lit ours and had our moment of peace and placed them in the pedestal.
 

Library

     After taking some pictures and walking around we walked out the back door into a courtyard. The court yard contained The Bodleian Library which was the first round library ever built in the world. It is no longer in service as a library but still stands in its original form as a piece of history. It also contained the Sheldonian Theatre, Trinity College, Balliol College, and St. John's College. Most of these buildings were off limits to the public so were not too sure what's in them but they looked absolutely amazing and we got some nice pictures of their exterior.
 

More walls 4

     Hunger was on our mind by this point so we found a local cafe to sit down and have a bite to eat then decided to just head back to our room as the weather was very miserable. We were all soaked to the bone still and it wasn't letting up so we really didn't feel like wondering aimlessly threw the rain anymore and headed to the bus stop. It was a long way back to our guest house so we decided to take the bus instead and get out of the rain.
 

Part Of The University

     We spent the rest of the night just hanging out and playing some cards. We braved the elements and headed down the street to Dominoes to get some pizza for supper but promptly returned home and crawled in for the night after some more cards. We're going to have to get used to the rain eventually but having most of our luggage in Watford we had a limited supply of selections and only enough clothes to last us till Tuesday.