48 Hours in Oxford

After a looooong bus ride from York, we arrived at our youth hostel in Oxford at 6pm on Sunday night. The hostel was hosting a number of other groups, and we were clearly the oldest group there….most of the other guests seemed to be about 13 or 14. I was surprised to see kids that age in a college town, but we kept seeing big packs of them everywhere we went in town over the next two days, so it must have been some kind of half-term in some neighboring country.

David knows Oxford pretty well after having spent a year there as an undergraduate, so I was happy to step back from tour guide for a bit and let him lead. After we all settled in, he led us into the town center to find some dinner. As a college town, Oxford is packed with restaurants and bars, and even though it was a Sunday night and Oxford is between terms, they were all quite busy. David gave us a quick sense of what was where, then we all split up to get our own meals. Our family ended up with takeaway from a food truck, and for about £11 we ended up with falafel, pizza and lamb kebab, and way more food than a family twice our size could reasonably eat.

The next morning, David took the students to meet with a colleague, so the kids and I headed to Christ Church Meadow, in search of some ducks and daffodils. We stopped at a Marks & Spencer on the way for juice and snacks, and that kept the kids sustained enough to last a number of hours in the park. Emma and John taught Leah how to play “Pooh Sticks” under one of the bridges, and we had a look at the Oxford Botanical Garden as well. Not much was in bloom other than spring bulbs, and though it was quite sunny it was still a bit cold. We stopped into a takeaway baguette place for sandwiches and fruit, and though it was a super tiny little place, the owner showed us to a back corner where there were some ottomans and a coffee table. We sat there and warmed up a bit, and then David texted me that the lecture was done. We met him at Blackwell’s bookshop, and he and John read Leah a collection of Peppa Pig books while Emma and I browsed. After a bit, we walked back to Christ Church to meet the students for a tour of the town and campus. I had hired a tour guide from the local visitor’s office, and the woman was wonderful. She took us all through Christ Church, and was good enough to walk through the history of the town and the college, and throw in a few bits about Alice in Wonderland and the filming of Harry Potter. We saw the staircase where Harry first meets Professor McGonnagle and Draco Malfoy, and the dining hall that was sort of the model for the great hall in the film. (The actual filming took place in a studio, where the filmmakers could recreate the Christ Church hall but add a fourth table for the four houses of Hogwarts). I could tell that Emma was very impressed with the school as we walked along, and she started to talk with the tour guide between stops about her interest in studying history. Towards the end of the tour, she whispered to me that she wouldn’t mind going to Oxford. I’m not sure what I think of that, though it may not matter in the end since Oxford has an acceptance rate of about 8% for American students.

We gave the students some free time after the tour, and our family headed to an Indian restaurant was had visited in 2011 that we remember was fabulous. It was closed when we arrived, so we walked to a nearby plaza instead and found a coffee shop that was still open. We got some coffee and hot chocolate and sat in a corner table for a bit of a rest. Leah was playing doll family with the collection of water and juice bottles we had amassed during the day, and David took advantage of the rare WiFi connection in the café to catch up on correspondence with tomorrow’s speaker. That left the three of us to plan our day tomorrow, and more importantly to consider what we were going to order at the restaurant.

Dinner was again fabulous…possibly even better than we remember. Leah was exhausted, but held her own at dinner for the most part. A group of our students were at a neighboring table (after we raved about the place to everyone, they all took our suggestion and ate there at some point over the visit), so Leah started to try to sneak up on them and take them by surprise. Since it was a bit early for most people for dinner the restaurant was still relatively quiet and so the staff was tolerant of her sneaking around among the tables a bit.

The next morning, David headed off with the students again for another lecture, so the kids and I went to the Natural History museum. It was full of primary students on tour groups, so we hit the highlights for Leah (dodo bird, butterflies, the black bear and the dinosaur and whale bones) then went to the Pitt River museum nearby This museum is a crazy collection of cabinetted curiousities, and would really take days to explore correctly. The folks who run the museum have created fabulous trails for the under-five set that involve clues to tiny wooden mice hidden in various display cabinets. Emma and John loved it so much on our last visit that we bought some of the wooden mice as souvenirs, and they still cherish them. So, this time with Leah they served as her tourguides and helped her find the hiding mice. She’s still a bit young to stay interested in such an activity for too long, and since the rooms are so full of tall cabinets packed closely together, it was pretty easy to lose track of her. So, once she got a little wild, we headed for the exit, stopping in the gift shop on the way out for three more wooden mice.

We spent our last hour walking through town, taking pictures and picking up more takeaway food. We walked back to the hostel to eat and have some tea, and to wait for the students to arrive. At 2, the students came back with David, and our coach bus arrived as well to take us to London.