Hi everyone,
hope you are fine, despite of the fact the summer is over, and you have to get back to the school. We’re really busy here, trying to get in connection with the universities, and sending messages to the students who have already registered on ESPA’s website.
Luckily the weather is still nice, not really hot, but not cold or rainy. Perfect for walking around in the town, if the wind doesn’t become strong. That’s why there are still a lot of tourists on Bath’s streets. A few weeks ago when I visited Oxford I wasn’t so lucky. There were big, back clouds on the sky, so it started to rain a bit time to time, and it was really windy, but it was still worth a visit to the famous college city.
I traveled by train as always. You can get many places by train. If you buy the tickets earlier then you can get them even cheaper. I’ve to admit that sometimes there are also delays which are not so convenient, but I guess that happens in every country. If you buy your tickets in advance online you can choose whether you collect it from the self-service machine or if you book it at least a week earlier it can be sent to you by post.
So back to the report about Oxford. I had checked previously on the Internet what I wanted to visit, so my notes were already in my pocket when I left the railway station. I passed soon the The Ashmolean Museum which I couldn’t visit from inside, because there was no time for that (probably I should visit the city once again). I took some photos about the Martyrs Memorial and the building of the Macdonald Randolph Hotel (I know I’m talking about a hotel, but it looks great!). My first destination was the pub called The Eagle and the Child, which was closed of course, because they wouldn’t have big feast in the morning. I came here to take a picture about the Memorial plaque, which says that this was the place where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien usually met to have a beer and discuss things, like the books they’re writing. At the end of the day I came back here and the pub was luckily open by then.
So after the first unsuccessful visit of The Eagle and the Child, I started to visit the colleges. Because of the summer time, most of the universities were closed, and the streets were full of tourists and not students. You can visit some of the colleges, but most of them have an entrance fee. Probably it’s worth to visit at least one, because I have to be honest, they look almost the same. All of them are beautiful, but have the same type of style and after seeing the third one, you can’t even remember how the first looked! I decided to visit the famous Christ Church College. It opened just in the afternoon, and when I got back then, there as a huge queue. So I went in to 
Oxford Divinity School. There was just one room open there, and unfortunately the library wasn’t, but anyway, at least I saw something from the inside as well. 😉
I took some photos of the Radcliffe Camera, the Bridge of Sighs and many other colleges. The other building I could enter was the St Mary’s Church, where you’re able to go up to the tower as well, to have a view of the whole of Oxford.
This became a really long report about Oxford, so I’m finishing it now, and if you’re close to this city, don’t forget to visit it.
