Day 47 - Sunday, June 10th

Another aerial view of Oxford










The wood in these windows is amazing....wonder how old it is?




















The hills in the background













Blackwells' bookshop.....at least one level of it.










Our favorite beer.













Roy and Diane arrived from Paris late last night and we started our morning a bit slower than normal. We left the house about noon and headed to High Street. Our first stop was the beautiful University Church which has a stairway up to the top of the tower. The steps were very uneven and sometimes hard to climb, but the views of Oxford from the top were magnificent. It was interesting to note that the city of Oxford quickly turns into pasture land that was visible just beyond the towers. As we were climbing up the stairs there were a couple of open areas where you were even with some of the lower spires and carvings, and it was fun to be so close to them. The stairs also took us through the bell ringing tower and it was interesting to see all of the bell ropes tied up to various poles in the room.

As we were taking photos from the top, Michael noticed that there was a café just below us on the side of the church property. We went downstairs to investigate and ended up sitting outside in the sunshine and eating a wonderful meal. Michael and I split a plate of vegetable stir fry, served with a wonderful salad made of fresh greens.....they don’t make a salad simply with lettuce and tomato, but with every kind of green available.

After lunch we wandered further down the street and stopped in at Blackwell’s Bookshop. Michael and I had already been here once, but still enjoyed seeing the huge selection of books.

Next door we found a cute pub called “The White Horse” so we went in for a pint of beer. We all loved the beer called “Village Idiot” and debated long and hard about who should order it.

We split off from Roy and Diane and Michael and I headed back to our house to get ready for Chapel and another evening at High Table. We once again were treated like royalty and greatly enjoyed our evening. The food was wonderful...... we began with a salad and bread, followed with a Fish Casserole and main course was Almond Stuffed Chicken Breast with potatoes, zucchini and carrots. Desert was Chocolate Raspberry Tort. The usual chocolates, desert wines and coffee followed.

One interesting thing that I did learn was concerning the graduations that are taking place around Oxford right now. It seemed funny to me that graduations were happening before the term ended, so I asked about this. I was told that the students don’t find out their final exam results for about 1 month after taking the exam. After they find out that they have passed, they then apply for graduation and are assigned to a ceremony sometime in the future. Because there are so many students and so few ceremonies, the current graduates will not actually receive their degrees until 2008!!!!