Gregory Mulholland

This Saturday, Will, Jackie, Kelly, and I made our way to Oxford. According to Will: 90% of the civil service is from Oxbridge (the combined Universities of Oxford and Cambridge), 70% of those are from Cambridge, so they decided to make it really easy to get from Cambridge to London, but not from London to Oxford. Also to avoid a corridor of education between Oxford and Cambridge, there are no direct routes between the two Universities. Thus, wanting to have a whole day in the City, we set off at about 6:00 for the train station.

The Train Ride
The ride to London was nothing special. The 40 minute direct train was nice enough and we all just chatted for a while. When we got to London, we had to take the tube to Paddington station. Because of some crazy construction, it took us longer than usual, and we missed the quick(er) train to Oxford. When we finally got to Paddington, we had about 45 minuntes until our train for Oxford. Luckily, there was a Krispy Kreme in the station so we were able to get breakfast and indluge a sweet tooth at the same time. Finally, it was time to get our train.

We went to one of the middle cars on the train that was essentially empty, sat down in a group of 6 seats that faced each other, and started talking. A few minutes later, a guy walked onto the train and sat across the aisle from us. This guy had scarred and tatooed arms, was on the skinniner side, balding, and looked like he had lived a somewhat rough life. We didn’t really think anything of it. As the doors of the train closed, he asked us where we were going. We told him Oxford, and he made some comment about it that I didn’t completely understand. He had a heavy accent. Over the next 45 minutes or so, he lectured us on lots of things. We could hardly get a word in edgewise, which is probably a good thing considering most of what he said took a while to translate. His topics included, but were not limited to:
- his luck at gambling and knowledge of when to get out of the game and collect his winnings
- how he is a good dancer
- his divorces and children and step-children
- how America is ruining the world (despite our accents, he somehow did not pick up on the fact that we were Americans, or didnt acknowledge it)
- how Oxford and Cambridge and educated people are ruining the world (despite his knowing that we come from Cambridge and are going to Oxford)
- how he occasionally liked to enjoy a ‘joint’ but had a safety valve and would never touch crack or heroin
- how it is impolite to call someone who uses crack a crackhead
- the state and current cost of social housing
- his experience with psychiatric help
- his medical history
- something about a fox
Obviously, this guy made quite an impression. Fortunately, he disembarked about halfway to Oxford. It was an experience, but especially with Kelly there, he made me really uncomfortable.

Christ Church
When we finally arrived at Oxford, we really didn’t have a plan. Win had emailed me a list of fun things to do while we were there, but in my haste to leave, I had forgotten to print it. We will cover the ones we didn’t hit on this trip next time we go to Oxford, which will probably be in the spring. We started down toward city center and walked along High Street, a pedesrian only promenade with a list of shops almost identical to that of Cambridge. We turned down another street and found our first college of the day: Christ Church. It worked out perfectly, because it let us take an up-close look at some of the architecture and enjoy a little time away from the city. We walked across Christ Church Meadow:

to the river and followed the river down to the boathouses. We were able to see some of the teams practicing, mostly novice by the look of it. We then followed the river up to Magdalen bridge, where we rejoined one of the main roads. Apparently, Magdalen bridge is famous. By looking at it, you wouldn’t think so. It isn’t very impressive. The tradition, however, is that after exams, people run to Magdalen bridge and vault into the river. I am not sure about the river in Oxford, but if you did that in Cambridge, you wouldn’t have to worry about passing your exams, you would be in the hospital with all sorts of infections first. From, the bridge, you could see Magdalen tower:

One small note. I recently bought a tripod because I was sick of my pictures turning out blurry. I also tried out this program that lets you take bracketed photos (3 photos of the same scene: properly exposed, underexposed, and overexposed) and merge them into what is called a High Dynamic Range photo. It basically lets you take pictures of things that have really high contrast within the frame and show all of the areas of the picture. This is really good for shooting old buildings, or places with lots of shadows. It creates pictures that mimic more what the human eye sees naturally (though it can be argued that from a photography point of view this is somewhat cheating, but it makes neat pictures so I don’t really care). This also made me slightly annoying, I think, to my travel companions because I was always stopping to take multiple long-exposure photos of cool things. Some of them turned out really well and are posted here, the rest can be seen on my photo website.

Magdalen Bridge
From the bridge, we walked to the Radcliffe:

the famed reading room of the famed Bodelian Library (everything is famed in Oxford):



We also returned here after sunset to get some night photos.

The Eagle and Child

After all the walking, we were cold and hungry. We had all heard of the Eagle and Child, a famous pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein would hang out and talk about whatever insanely famous authors discuss. Apparently they would call it the Bird and Baby. It was the perfect English pub. It was dark and sort of cavernous. The bartenders were funny and I had to duck to get though every doorway. Most importantly the food was amazing. Like I mentioned, we were chilled to the bone, so the steak and ale pie that I ordered was just the right thing. It is essentially a steak pot pie minus the vegetables. Pure comfort food.

The Museums
After lunch, we decided to head for the Museum of History of Science. It turns out that this was rightly not on Win’s list of things to do. It was essentially the museum of astrolabes, quadrangles, and sextants. There was one cool exhibit, though. Apparently Einstein has visited Oxford to give a lecture in the 1930s. When he did, they cut about 5 lines of the chalkboard away from the wall and saved it. It has his original handwriting where he describes the density of the universe, or something. Its especially neat because you can see where he made a small error and used his hand to smudge it out.

We then went to the Museum of Oxford. It was pretty informative, but not exciting (also not on Win’s list). I fell asleep for about 13 minutes of the 15 minute short film they had on the town. It wasn’t very exciting. The museum did drive home the point that the Oxford colleges are essentially a set of former monasteries that were disbanded over a course of several hundred years.

Food
After a bit more walking, it was tea time. We found a restaurant to have tea in. Then, walked around a little more. We went and took some more pictures and went to a pub that Will and Jackie suggested. It is called the Turf Tavern. Never have I seen a pub hidden in the middle of a city block. After going down 2 tiny allies, we found our way to the pub. It was a really cool place. Unfortunately, despite its difficult location, all the tables were taken. so instead, we went to Nando’s. It is a Portugese restaurant. It is the closest thing to am American dining experience

I have had since I have been here. They had real lemonade, not Sprite relabeled as lemonade. The food was quick, plentiful, and delicious. Even better: we have one in Cambridge. I’ll definitely be going there again.

Finally, we got back on the train and headed home. I can honestly say that from that I saw, I like Cambridge much better than Oxford. I am sure once you get into the colleges and everything, it is a great place, but they aren’t very inviting to visitors.

This weekend we have our first race: the Bedford Head.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite