Destination : OXFORD
WELCOME TO OXFORD!Hi ALL! Been a while in between posts again, just because Steve and I have both got jobs now and we haven't been out too much apart from to WORK and then back HOME again... but more of that later at another post.
On the Saturday (the 14th July), Steve and I hopped on a train and headed to the prestigious town of Oxford by train. We booked our train tickets online the night before hoping to avoid any drama's at the station the next morning. We got up nice and early and jumped on the tube at Queen's Park to Paddington Station, the home of Paddington Bear! Actually, funny enough when we got to Paddington, there was a little stand selling Paddington Bear memorabilia. Paddington Station is actually really HUGE, it has an underground part (for the Bakerloo, District, Hammersmith & District Lines) as well as an above ground part for the NATIONAL RAIL system.Paddington like Spencer St back home in Melbourne is undercover completely, it has a great big shopping area with a BOOTS ( like Priceline), Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's (like Coles, Safeway), Coffee houses, French Patisserie, Krispy Kreme, Sushi and Burger King. Essentially everything you could imagine for the hungry passing through traveller and Londoners returning home after a weekend away. The station itself is more sealed off than you imagine, because the air just doesn't seem to circulate, with diesel engines running all day from the trains it is really the primary cause of Global warming in the Northern Hemisphere!
Anyway, we hopped on our Great Western train at Paddington around 9am. For such a HUGE station I am amazed at how organised it seems to remain (except when there are delays of course!). Security is HIGH, lots of officers around and bit of a shame if you have rubbish because there is NOT ONE rubbish bin in the entire station. So, we arrived at Oxford around 10:30am with our backpacks on our backs and a whole town to explore. I was pretty keen to get rid of my backpack immediately but we couldn't check into our hotel until around 2pm.
So we had a look around on foot, checked out the sights for after checking into the hotel. We set our eyes on the Ashmolean Museum, and we walked and walked and walked. We made stop in the University Botanical Gardens for a rest (because I was complaining of a heavy backpack.. LOL and that is WHY I don't do camping and nature walks people! ) Still after a little rest, we walked around a little more and ended up getting a little lost (MAP TO GROUND.. I KNOW!) we caught a bus back into town and then out to our hotel at Pear Tree.
Imagine my delight, when I saw our hotel room a nice Queen Size BED, and a bath tub... lovely. Steve and I both dropped our backpacks and sunk into the bed for an afternoon rest! Ahhhh.. So refreshed after our lovely afternoon rest and lunch at Burger King we set our for some serious sight-seeing! Orright, so we were still pretty tired, so we reserved our Saturday for some leisurely browsing around town, taking in the architecture and history the town had to offer. I felt somewhat that during the day, we walked around in circles with our touristy map, still it didn't matter. Our first point of call for the afternoon, was Radcliffe Square. This square is completely surrounded by Oxford University and several college's. It is named after John Radcliffe, a British Physicist. The square is the home of the Radcliffe Camera, which was originally built (1737-1749) to house the Science Library. Now, it houses reading rooms of the Bodleian Library.
The Bodleian Library was where we stopped next. This is the MAIN research library of the University of Oxford. It's history dates back to the 1600's and even well back into the fourteenth century. The library named after Sir Thomas Bodley and English diplomat and scholar. He funded the refurbishment of the old library in 1598 at which the library was renamed in his honour. At the Bodleian Library we found our way to a small exhibition called "Italy's Three Crowns". This exhibition displayed handwritten works of Dante Alighieri (including the Divine Comedy), Francesco Petrarcha (Canzoniere, or Book of Poems) & Giovanni Boccaccio (On famous Women & Decameron). It was amazing to see an original handwritten work from a Renaissance Poet. The exhibition strictly implied no photo's or video camera's. However, when I saw this work I had to sneak in a picture for the ages...
From the library, we moved onto the Museum of the History of Science. It has a collection of historic scientific instruments and is the world's oldest museum building and used to be the original site of the Ashmolean Museum. It contains a collection of sundials, microscopes, telescopes, camera's, mathematical instruments (for astronomy, used for calculating, navigation and surveying). The museum also contains a blackboard containing an original lecture from Albert Einstein at the University in May of 1931... as well as some penicillin experiments.. (I guess Fleming wasn't around to supervise!) Feeling a bit tired, Steve and I retired from our history lessons and made our way to a restaurant/bar called the LIVING ROOM, found a comfy couch and plonked our butts on it for a late afternoon cocktail...
Feeling a little ermm lightheaded from my MUDSLIDE cocktail, Steve and I headed to explore the gardens around Christ Church. The sun was out, the afternoon was warm there were HEAPS of people out and about for afternoon walks...just a superb way to spend the rest of the day. On the way back from our parky walk, we discovered a couple of plaques of interest plastered on walls of buildings (apparently that happens ALOT in Oxford).For those scientists out there Robert Boyle discovered Boyle's Law which stands as : PV= k (where k is a constant of (force multiplied by distance). In the same building, Robert Hooke (who was Boyle's assistant), discovered Hooke's Law of elasticity as well as developing the first microscope which led to the discovery of the first living cell. Hooke's microscope supported the works of Anton Van Leeuwenhoek the "Father of Microbiology"...
After our big day, we had our dinner at a place called "ALL BAR ONE" and had a number of Tapas (small plates of food) and headed back to our hotel room for a good night's rest and ready to tackle day two! Stay Tuned...
