Oxford, England

We took a trip to Oxford for our first weekend back to London in 2012. We made a day trip out of it and took an early train (about an hour) to Oxford on Saturday morning. Oxford is a wonderful city with more history than we could even imagine! We took a 2 hour walking tour around the city and colleges. The name Oxford literally comes from oxen fording the river and dates back to 900 A.D.! The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is actually a combination of many different individual colleges (with their own campus, admissions, programs etc) that operate under the name of Oxford University. We had no idea this is how it worked, very intriguing idea. Although, we didn't see any oxen during our tour we did see some cows!





After our walking tour we went to the oldest pub in Oxford and arguably the oldest pub in England (depending on who you speak to). It's called The Bear because they actually used to have a pit outside the pub where they would tie up a bear and unleash dogs on it. This was considered a form of entertainment back then. Thankfully, I was not alive during this time because I could barely stomach just hearing about it, let alone witnessing it! We decided to not hold their past activities against them and take in the history of the place. It's a tiny little pub with 5 tables, a small bar and very low ceilings and doorways. We had to wait about 15 minutes for a table, but we were able to enjoy a pint as we waited and took in the interesting decor. The walls and ceiling we covered in frames containing hundreds of ties, but just the bottom 1/4 or so of each tie. Each one was labeled with a name and year, we saw some over 100 years old. The story goes that the owner would clip the ties of his customers to remember them and then a tradition was born! We got a table just in time as several groups came in and it's first come first serve...yourself. We grabbed the table quickly as it opened up. We ordered a fish and chips and shepherd’s pie; we wanted to go with traditional British food being in the oldest pub and all.






After lunch we picked up a few souvenirs and headed towards St. Mary's college to take a tour. We picked this one because several scenes from Harry Potter were filmed here and I LOVE those books and the movies. At St. Mary's we were told that that part of the tour was closed that day for a private event. We decided to hold off on the tour and try to come back later.



We walked around a bit more on our own and decided to call it a day and head back to the train station. I'm so glad we got a chance to visit this city; it was so much more than I was expecting!




Here's the link to pictures:
http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=7983421007/a=53561785_53561785/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/