Oxford

We arrived at Heathrow at 6:50 today, a bit early, and the rest of the day went like that -- Click, click, click, bus ride to Oxford, checking into our substandard, expensive room, and tour of the town and colleges.

 

Rhonda in our no headroom room. Good thing Steven was not with us!

 

We spent the morning people watching from the front window of a breakfast place, and then purchased a Cotswold Way guide from Blackwell's and a UK cell phone from Car Phone Warehouse. The phone cost us £5 and we bought £10 worth of time. Have not tried it as yet. After all these chores we came home and rested for a bit.

 

Then we took the city and college self tour. This is one of the premier University towns in the world, where all of our Rhoad's scholars go, including Bill Clinton, before he started using his little head to make decisions. There are 38 colleges and 20K students. The colleges are interwoven with the town, both of which are ancient. When it started raining harder, we ducked into pubs and sampled the not so cold cask ales and watched the rain come down.

 

The quads and grounds are beautiful.

 

Then we toured the University Bodleian Library, purported to have the largest collection of any university library. The earliest part of the building dates from 1488 and was used as an examination room for the divinity school. We saw a reading room filled with rare books including a first edition of Ben Johnson's Dictionary. No photos were allowed, but here is the Radcliffe Camera, a reading room built next door away from the book collection so that students could read by candle light without fear of fire destroying the books.

 

We finished the day at the Eagle and Child Pub, where Tolkien and C. S. Lewis held court.