A couple of weeks ago, we spent a few days in Oxford, seeing the sights. We stayed in the Falcon Hotel/B&B in Abingdon Road. Not a bad place and cheaper than we expected. Most usefully, it’s within walking distance of the City Centre – or at least, it started off within walking distance, but by the end the distance seemed to have miraculously grown: at least, that’s what my feet were telling me!
First day we wandered round seeing the sights from the outside: mostly the colleges and the Bodleian. Second day was visit day, and we toured the insides of half-a-dozen of the colleges. Christ Church was nice, but dear at £7 a pop (cheaper if you’re a wrinkly). Trinity was OK, Jesus a disappointment (but then, they did play host to Harold Wilson and TE Lawrence…). Exeter was nice: or at least, the fellows’ garden gives a nice view of the Radcliffe Camera and Christ Church.
Day 3 was Ashmolean Day. We got there just as it opened and staggered out again just before it closed without having seen all of it, and the bits we did see got a bit… superficial… towards the end. This was the day where the walk back to the Hotel seemed longest of all.
4th day was UOMNH and Pitt-rivers day. Again, you need a whole day. The Natural History Museum is interesting, but quite small. The Pitt Rivers resembles the house of an OC hoarder. The cabinets are absolutely stuffed. There’s stuff at ankle level and stuff ten feet up the walls. The cabinets scarcely have dust-room between the exhibits. To look adequately at it all would take weeks, if not months. And that’s just the bits on public display…
So, that was Oxford. Been there, done that, didn’t buy a teeshirt.
We’ll go back again, one day.