Oxford

We woke up and took our hiking backpacks into town, grabbed some pasties from Gregg's bakery and trekked to the rail station. By the time we got our tickets we had just enough time to get on the train as they blew whistles and we found seats after it started moving. From York we went through Sheffield and Birmingham to get to Oxford. This was Dad's first train ride and he liked how smooth and fast it glided. Not as much of a hassle as driving the winding narrow roads and roundabouts.

In Oxford, we took a walking tour around several colleges of the university. It is set up differently tan American universities and very hard to get accepted into. There was a church that John Newman preached at. We saw the college of Jesus Christ where Lawrence of Arabia studied. The great hall customs were similar to something you'd find out of one of the first Harry Potter movies. Actually alot of the movies were filmed in Oxford and around places I've seen in my time here in England, of which I'm not a fan of the movie anyhow.

We also saw gardens that influenced Alice in Wonderland...and English students were actually playing croquet in the same garden in the story. The writer was a professor there and later on in London, we saw his diary and his hand written book. We also saw the tree that inspired his poem, the Jabberwakee. We stopped at the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and friends met every Tuesday morning...The Eagle and Child. Then we went to mass at the Oratory of the Blackfriars. This night was Dad's first experience staying in a hostel and it wasn't too shabby in the 4-bunkbed room.