Out and About in Oxford-Town: Part I

This weekend Amy and Libby ventured to Paris via a nine hour, overnight coach ride to, as we say jokingly, "repair their friendship." As a result, Caitlin and I decided we had to do something fun while they were gone.

Sunday

We chose to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum for the second time. The first time we went (read more about it here) we only managed to see the ground floor because there were so many displays. Our goal this time was to finish the top two floors before trying to get some Christmas shopping done.

The sky was a soft blue with wispy clouds that were a welcome sight after so many days of clouds and rain. The temperature has finally dipped low enough (under 40 degrees Fahrenheit) for me to really feel the cold when outside. The frosty air numbs the fingers and ears if they are not covered properly.

Beyop

The first floor (second floor in America) of the museum was dedicated to more daily-life type artifacts like bags, body ornaments, baby carriers, games, and art. I never realized just how many ways human beings adorn their bodies. Necklaces, bracelets, finger rings, toe rings, headdresses, anklets, and waist adornments were all there.

The female members of the Adi of northeast India wore metal disks attached to a string around their waists. This ornamentation, called a beyop, was worn daily from the time the girl could walk until the birth of her first child.

Bags from around the world

The most interesting exhibits were about important stages in a person's life: childhood, puberty, and marriage.

The display on body modification was also very informative, though I already knew most of the basics about scarification and tattooing. One body modification I had not heard of before was head shaping, a practice normally found in African cultures. Mothers would use cloth or a specially made apparatus to gradually make their newborn baby's head more elongated. The reshaping process took several weeks of application for about fifteen minutes a day during the child's nap. Surprisingly, the information plaque said that the process is not harmful.

There were also several brightly colored silk shoes worn by Chinese women who had their feet bound on display in this section. I knew that their feet were small, but not that they were that small. The shoes looked like they would only fit the feet of little babies. I cannot imagine how painful it must have been for the women.

Further along the room were decorated eggs, and not just chicken eggs. There was a painted ostrich egg and some were very small and probably came from some kind of songbird. Each one was hand painted with incredible detail.

In this same section were paintings from different cultures. My eye was drawn to two African paintings done in purples, greens, and browns on a background of black paper. They depicted antelopes, warriors, and birds in a slightly abstract tribal style. I really like the thin, angular quality of the images where you can tell what they are without it being strictly accurate to porportions. The bright colors and spindly trees with poofs of leaves remind me of the book The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.
   

The top floor did not have nearly as many artifacts as the two floors below. Its displays focused mainly on weaponry, armor, and fishing. There were bunches of guns, but I did not spend very long looking at them. All of the swords and daggers were much prettier and interesting, though I did make myself a little queasy imagining what being stabbed by one would feel like. I had two favorites among the swords and daggers. The first was a plain sword from Asia with a slightly curved blade, about three feet long, with a hilt made of beige twine. It's simplicity was very appealing to the eye. My other favorite was a dagger with a hilt made of a pale, milky blue stone.

As we were heading out of the museum past the national history section, I saw this guy gazing out of a glass display case.

Yeah, I know, super creepy, right? He looks like he should be the mischievous minion of some evil villain...or he could be just contemplating when to lunge forward and bite you on the nose.

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We (meaning mostly me) tried to do some Christmas shopping after the museum, but I just wasn't feeling it. There were just too many people everywhere and I did not know exactly what I was looking for. We mostly just ended up wandering around Primark, Apricot, and Miss Selfridge (all clothing stores) without buying anything.

When we got hungry, it was off to the Covered Market for sandwiches at a French deli. We ate there our first week in Oxford and thought it was good then. I had a panini with sundried tomato chicken, mozzarella and basil. It was a very good combination of flavors, filling but inexpensive.  

All of this was accomplished before 4pm. We spent the rest of the day sitting at our kitchen table writing blog posts and doing homework while having tea and cookies.   

Winter Wonderland and Volcanoes

Last week Caitlin, Libby, Amy and I spent our first true day in London since September when we went to see the changing of the guard. We have spent a little time wandering around the city before our train left for other places, but it just is not the same.

We had three goals for the day: Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland, the Victoria & Albert Museum and a dessert lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

We took the train into London Paddington Station in order to use our last BritRail day. The ride was uneventful until we were walking off the train and Amy realized she did not have her phone. She had been using it on the train so it was not left at the flat accidentally.

We went back to the train, found our coach and looked around the table we had been sitting at, but it was not there. We were afraid to stay on the train much longer for fear that it would start moving, so we got off to look for a booth or something where there might be a "Lost and Found."

Just then, a rail station employee carrying a sweater asked if we had lost something. Amy told him she was missing her phone and that it was blue. The man pulled it out of his pocket, but in order to give it too her she had to prove it was hers. Libby offered to call it and it was a few tense seconds waiting for the call to connect.

That was a very fortuitous end to what could have been a terrible event, especially for Amy who had to deal with her computer breaking earlier in the week. I do not know how much more bad luck she could have taken without a breakdown, one she would be completely entitled to.

We got to Hyde Park by memory and just chose a random path inside the park to follow since there were no signs telling use where exactly the Winter Wonderland was located. Then we saw a ferris wheel in the distance and used that as our destination point.

The first section of the Christmas area was a bunch of carnival rides. There were small roller coasters, fun houses, a carousel and a circular swing ride that took riders up at least 100 feet into the air. There were decorations of toy soldiers, garlands, and strings of lights. There was even an electronic mounted moose head that sang songs in German since the Winter Wonderland was supposedly modeled after the traditional Christmas markets of Germany.

It was strangely deserted since it was about 11am on a Monday and most children were at school. There were a few very young children running around with their parents. It just seemed wrong to be at a carnival without tons of children yelling and getting underfoot.

After the ride section were a bunch of small, log cabin style buildings, each about the size of a shed and decorated with green garland and lights. They sold Christmas ornaments, candles, jewelry, scarves, hats, and much more. There were also tons of food stalls, many more than I think was necessary, especially since most sold the same basic things. The most common foods were crepes, burgers, bratwurst, mulled wine, beer, waffles, and churros. A few stalls were dedicated solely to selling mountains of sweets like candy floss, truffles, fudge, and gummy snacks.

We made a full loop of the park before we decided to head out the Winter Wonderland's main entrance which was actually on the complete opposite side from where we entered. We paused to look at a map of Hyde Park to orient ourselves (the Park covers 350 acres) and take some time taking pictures of the Serpentine River and its many types of waterfowl. Some people were feeding the birds so there were bunches of them ranging from ducks to swans to pigeons waddling around on the sidewalk.

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Exiting Hyde Park, we followed Libby's defective Google maps directions down a bunch of residential streets trying to get to the Victoria & Albert Museum. We found it eventually, though there had to have been a more direct route to get there.

The Victoria & Albert Museum, founded in 1852, is huge, covering 12.5 acres and containing clothing, sculpture, ironwork, furniture, jewelry, paintings, textiles, glass, and other artifacts. I wanted to go to the museum to see its fashion exhibits. The fashion exhibit displayed styles from different eras from the 17th century up to haute couture of modern fashion. It was amazing to see how complex and detailed women's clothing was in the past.

I have done several reports involving women's undergarments, corsets in particular, so I knew what most of them were in the displays. However, there was one undergarment I had never heard of before. This was a piece of fabric stuffed with feathers or something similar, then worn around the upper arm to support large, puffed sleeves.

We spent several hours wandering the museum looking at some paintings, ironwork and jewelry. In those hours we probably only covered a very small portion of the large building. It would be amazing to be able to go on a regular basis and see each of the 145 different galleries.

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Every since Libby learned that there was a Rainforest Cafe in London, she has really wanted to go. I guess there used to be one near her house and she would go there every year for her birthday party. According to my mom, I have been to a Rainforest Cafe in California before, but I do not remember it.

Walking into the building, you are inside of a gift shop with stuffed animals, books, and other trinkets. You have to go to the back of the store and downstairs to get to the restaurant. The eating facility is decorated just like the rainforest. The ceiling is covered in fake foliage extending from fake trees. There are rocks, small ponds, and animatronic animals that move every once in a while. 

We were sat at a table right next to two gorillas. About every ten minutes they would start making gorilla noises and beating their chests. The novelty of the experience wore off after the second round of movements and just became a little irritating.

The food was all really expensive (we were going there for the atmosphere, not the food) so we bought two desserts: Eaton Mess Cheesecake and a Volcano. Yes, we did have dessert for lunch. 

A Volcano is a large bowl of ice cream,  brownie, marshmallows, whipped cream and chocolate syrup. It is served with an actual sparkler, like the ones you get on the Forth of July. I felt it was overpriced, even though it was large, because there was barely any brownie and the strawberry ice cream used tasted like the really cheap kind that is made totally from artificial flavors. 

Photo by Libby

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We ended the day's trip to London with a stop off at Hope and Greenwood Sweet Shop. We all bought a mixture of the shop's homemade hard candies. All four of use got Cherry Bakewell flavor. Amy then got Lemon Meringue, Caitlin and Libby got Birthday Cake, and I got Ginger Beer. 

The young man working there was completely adorable. He had dark hair cut short on the sides and long on the top, and black, thick-framed glasses. We had a good conversation with him about all of the flavors and his personal favorites (He likes Ginger Beer best). He ended up giving us several free samples to take with us to try the flavors (Rose and Lychee, Sunshine Festival, Sugar Plum, and Treacle Tart).

So far I have tried Rose and Lychee, Sunshine Festival, Sugar Plum. Rose and Lychee was pink and tasted like eating pure sugar tinted with rose flavoring. Sunshine Festival was a pale yellow and fizzed a little on the tongue. It was more tropical flavored like mango. Sugar plum was a purplish maroon color and tasted pretty similar to a grape tootsie pop. It had a chocolate center and everything.      

Cadbury World and More Paintings

If you are an American and you hear the phrase, "The World of Chocolate," you probably think of Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. If you are British you probable think, "Cadbury World."

This attraction dedicated to chocolate is located in Bournville, outside of Birmingham. We took the long scenic route from the train station around a large brick building that turned out to be the factory. Despite being a relatively sunny day, there was barely anyone around. On the ten minute walk we probably saw about four people walking and passed a children's football (soccer) game.

I guess most of the people were just already inside the factory, as the lobby was full of families with young children. Some where buying sugary sweets from the gift shop while others waited for their tour time to be called. The lobby was decorated in shades of purple and grey. The employees wore button-down shirts with stripes of violet, lilac, and lavender which I thought looked very nice.

The first part of the tour took us through decorated rooms showing the history of chocolate and the Cadbury family. The first room was decorated like a jungle with trees, rocks, and even a small pool to resemble South America during the arrival of Cortez. Cacao was an important part of Aztec religion and daily life.

From there we moved throughout the centuries as chocolate was introduced to the Spanish monarchs and eventually became a delicacy of the aristocracy. In the early 1800s, John Cadbury began to sell drinking chocolate along with tea and coffee in his shop in Birmingham, England. His business grew and in 1861 his two sons, Richard and George, decided to establish a factory in a stretch of farmland outside of Birmingham. This land was named Bournville and the Cadbury brothers built a village around the factory to house their employees. There were cottages, bath houses, a church and recreation fields for both men and women.

Next up was a winding path through the actual factory. The factory was not in operation that day which  made looking at all of the equipment a little boring. Though, we did get another candy bar and a small cup of melted chocolate on the walk. The melted chocolate was smooth and very rich. It probably took me ten minutes to finish the little thing, but that is just because I like to savor sweets.

After buying a few treats in the gift shop we headed outside and around the factory building, past a massive playground with swings, twisty slides, and more, to the Essence of Cadbury. A small group crowded into a room and watched a humorous dramatization of how Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate was discovered. It definitely was not historically accurate. The real reason people went to it was to get more melted chocolate afterwards. This time you got about 1/8 of a cup of chocolate and one topping like marshmallows or shortbread crumbles. We sat outside in the sun, but none of us managed to eat that much chocolate even though we wanted to eat it all.

The factory was in a very large building, but it still didn't seem large enough to produce the amount of chocolate I feel like they must have too. I am not positive, but I think the factory in Bournville is the only one to produce Cadbury chocolates for Europe (Hershey's produces Cadbury branded chocolate in the United States).

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At this pointed it was only early afternoon so we took the train back into Birmingham for dinner. Since there was about 45 minutes until closing time, we hurried to the Birmingham Museum since it was not a far walk from the rail station. I knew nothing about what the museum was about. I just wrote down the directions in case we needed something extra to do.

It ended up being a great decision because the new exhibition was titled, "Love and Death: Victorian Paintings from Tate," which turned out to feature mostly Pre-Raphaelite artists. The main attraction was "The Lady of Shalott" by John William Waterhouse. The painting is probably one of England's most famous, and it is by my favorite artist.

"The Lady of Shalott" is a very large painting, five feet tall and six and a half feet wide. I never imagined that it was so large. It is strange to be standing in front of something real after seeing so many picture of it. Seeing famous paintings in person probably would have a greater effect of me than seeing a celebrity in person.

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

The gallery also exhibited a John William Waterhouse painting that I had never seen before, titled, "St. Eulalia." It is not one of the paintings that normally come up when you search the internet for Waterhouse's paintings. It is different than most of his other ones in that it depicts a more religious scene as he normally deals with characters from the tales of King Arthurs and Mediterranean mythology.

The painting shows the body Eulalia, a young Christian girl who was tortured and killed by the Roman rulers for her faith. When she died, it is said that a white dove flew from her mouth, often seen as a symbol of her soul, and it began to snow, the whiteness covering her naked body.

St. Eulalia by John William Waterhouse

All of the paintings were beautiful and pleasing to my personal aesthetic. It was really difficult to try to absorb all of the details while still rushing to see everything before the museum closed. It turned out to be a great day full of sunny weather, sweet treats, and beautiful art.

Cultural History and Scones

On Friday the 9th, we decided to explore more of the attractions Oxford has to offer. The four of us met Beth and rode into downtown Oxford, walking down Cornmarket Street to the Ashmolean. The Ashmolean is a museum filled with ancient artifacts like pottery, weaponry, and coinage, as well as several art and sculpture galleries.

Most of the rooms focused on either British, Roman or Chinese history. I most enjoyed looking at the currency exhibition and the pieces of jewelry scattered throughout the various rooms. They had bills displayed from all over the world, including money printed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War. There were thousands of coins in a range of sizes marked with the ruler of the time. The biggest ones were about 1 1/2 inches in diameter with the smallest about 1/4 inches in diameter. If coins today were that small I think I would be loosing them all of the time. Historians use coins to determine who were the rulers of Ancient Rome as each emperor had their likeness stamped on coins during their reign.

We moved on to the art galleries which were decorated with jewel toned wallpaper to fit the time periods of the paintings in their gilt frames. I perused most of the paintings quickly, pausing to read the plaques describing the artist and painting when one caught my interest. I can appreciate art and fairly intelligently discuss the symbolism and possible meaning the artist was trying to convey, as well as art techniques used, but I am very picky about what art I really enjoy.

At one point we all got a little separated as the rooms all seem interconnected, creating the feeling of a maze where you don't know where each turn and new doorway will take you. I managed to find Caitlin and we sat on a bench waiting for the others. To pass the time we discussed the painting directly in front of the bench. The focus of the painting was a sitting figure with shoulder-length blond hair, robes of pale pink and cobalt, and a light shining around the head. My guess was that the person might be the Virgin Mary since I believe she is often pictured in pink and blue robes with a halo. Seated around the figure were older men with greying hair and thick beards. To the far right were two more people, a man and a woman, with golden halo hovering over their heads.

The halos suggested a biblical scene but I did not know which one. Caitlin and I tried to make up stories about what was going on, and why all of these men were surrounding this feminine figure. Giving up the guessing, I rose from the comfortably padded bench and read the information plaque. We were pretty far off the mark. The central figure, which we thought was a woman due to the longer hair, fair face, and pink robes, was actually Jesus as a child when he first preached to the learned men of his village.

By this time we had managed to find each other. Only one floor was left for us to see and we moved through even more art galleries fairly quickly. The final room was smaller than the previous ones and decorated with emerald green wallpaper. Looking in the first alcove, I found that all of the paintings were appealing to me, and I spent several minutes reading their information cards. It was only when I was moving to another section to the room that I saw it was dedicated to artists of the Pre-Raphaelite art form which happens to be by favorite style.

The Pre-Raphaelite style is highly detailed with an emphasis on Nature. The paintings often depict characters from literature and myth. Scenes deriving from the Arthurian legends, Greek mythology, and the Shakespearean plays were all popular with the artists of the style.

William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Rossetti are often considered the founders of the art movement, though I am most familiar with the works of John William Waterhouse.

The gallery featured several paintings by William Holman Hunt which I found breathtaking with their emphasis on detail and the use of vibrant colors. I particularly liked The Afterglow in Egypt. According to the information plaque, Hunt had a very hard time getting the Egyptian girl in the painting to stand still long enough to sketch her properly.

Afterglow in Egypt
by William Holman Hunt

In the opposite alcove, there was a Waterhouse painting, and I had a bit of an "Oh my goodness, this is an actual painting by John William Waterhouse" moment. The Internet is so useful to learn about art, but it can not compare to actually standing before a famous painting in real life.

Ariadne by John William Waterhouse

The Waterhouse painting in the Ashmolean was Ariadne. It depicts Ariadne, the princess who gave a ball of string to Theseus to guide hime in the Minator's labyrinth. The two fell in love and eloped together but the goddess Athena demanded that Theseus leave Ariadne on a beach. The painting depicts the young woman, two leopards at her feet, reclining as Theseus' ship sails away.

We left the museum after I finished looking at the Pre-Raphaelite room and made our way down High Street to the Vaults and Garden Cafe for afternoon tea. The Vaults and Garden is in a beautiful rectangular room with vaulted ceilings that is attached to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. The rustic tables and chairs were made from dark wood, and the dim lighting gave the cafe a very cozy feel.

I ordered English Breakfast tea and a scone. The tea came in a small green teapot to keep it warm. There were steel creamers, only two inches high, for holding the milk and sugar cubes. The large, golden brown, freshly made scone was served with clotted cream and raspberry jam. The scone was crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. I cut small pieces from the bread, spreading it with clotted cream then jam. I ate very slowly to appreciate how delicious all of the food tasted. I absolutely love the idea of having tea and a small snack in the afternoon to hold you over until dinner.

A Day Trip to Cardiff

This past Friday, November 2, Caitlin, Amy, Libby and I went on our first day trip outside of Oxford. Our destination was Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, our main goal to visit the Doctor Who Experience.

When we left for the train at 7:45 am, I was worried that the weather was going to be miserable. The forecast for Cardiff was a high temperature in the low 40s Fahrenheit and a 70% chance of rain. Looking out of the windows on the train ride, our spirits lifted as we saw white clouds with some bursts of blue sky. Since being in England I have learned to appreciate any little bit of blue that manages to peep through the almost constant cloud cover.

However, all of these hopes were dashed when we emerged from a long underground tunnel under the Severn River into Wales, to be greeted with a sky that was dark with an almost greenish tinge. All l could think was, "What have we gotten ourselves in to?" and "Don't worry. They do not get tornados here in England even if those clouds do look really ominous."

We had to transfer trains several times in Cardiff until we reached the stop for Cardiff Bay. By this time we were running late, it was 11:45 am and the entrance time on of Doctor Who Experience tickets was for between 11:00 am and 12:00 pm. We were planning to use Libby's iPhone for directions but neither the Apple version or the Google version were working properly, so we walked briskly towards the bay since we knew that it was somewhere in that area.

We were in such a rush that we had little time to appreciate the fact that it was actually very sunny with fluffy white clouds in the sky. Time ticked on until we found a tourist information centre and the woman working kindly gave us a map and the directions we needed. We just needed to walk right along the bay for about ten minutes to get to the Doctor Who Experience, and even though we arrived ten minutes after 12:00 pm, the employees did not even check our designated times on our tickets. We had been worried that they would not let us in.

(Full details on my time at the Doctor Who Experience are posted here)

After leaving the Doctor Who Experience, we strolled casually along the waterfront admiring the modern architecture of the surrounding buildings and the way the sun glistened on the water of the bay. The rays of sun made it feel unusually warm and we unbuttoned our coats and found little use for our scarves and gloves.

We were starving by this time and decided to take the recommendation of our British friend Beth's friend Daniel who studied in Cardiff, and eat at Eddie's American Diner. It might seem strange to want to eat American food while abroad, but sometimes it is just nice to be able to look at a menu and know every dish being offered.

Eddie's American Diner was a long, rectangular restaurant decorated like a 1950s diner. Red, vinyl booths lined the right-hand wall with the open kitchen on the left, separated by a counter with bar stools. All of the booths inside were taken so we had to sit at the tables outside, though it was colder now that we were in the shade. The tables outside were small and silver with two matching chairs on one side and a red and black bench seat designed to look like that of the seats in a 1950s car on the other. The place looked strangely familiar to us. We figured out why when Amy returned from the restroom to tell us that a scene in a Doctor Who episode had been filmed in the restaurant.

We all ordered various kinds of burgers and a side order of french fries to share. This diner at the little things that we had been missing since leaving America. Things like ice in your drinks, the square, orange cheese slices, and, for me personally, mustard for my burger. The only thing not typically American were the buns which tasted freshly baked with a crisp outside instead of the soft, full of preservative kind that we would have gotten in the States.

Sitting at our table deciding what to do next, we watched as an employee left the Starbucks Coffee Shop next door with a tray of free samples. All we could see in the cups was a bunch of whipped cream, we wanted to try some even though we had no idea what it was. We then walked by her post on the sidewalk, trying not look like we had taken that route for the express purpose of being offered the samples. The small red, Christmas themed cups were filled with a new toffee flavored coffee that was actually pretty good considering I do not typically enjoy anything coffee flavored. The best part though was the frothy whipped cream sprinkled with crunchy toffee bits.

Our coffee cups in hand, we walked back to Roald Dahl Plass to take pictures of the Millennium Centre and the Millennium Tower. The Millennium Centre is the setting for operas, plays and concerts. It is a newer building constructed in a modern architectural style, its most notable feature being the curved, copper frontage embellished with the phrase "In These Stones Horizons Sing," in both English and Welsh.

Millennium Centre

The Millennium Water Tower is a semi-circular sliver tower set directly across from the Millennium Centre. It is basically a tall water feature, with water cascading down its flat, metallic sides. This area of Cardiff Bay was also strange to be in because I had seen these sites before when watching Doctor Who and its spin-off series Torchwood.

Millenium Water Tower

Knowing that it would be dark in several hours, we chose to leave Cardiff Bay and head into the city centre to visit The Cardiff Story, a free museum about the history of the city. I found it very interesting because it was more interactive than most museums and it focused more on the individuals who had lived in the city throughout the years.

All of the exhibits were found in one main room with alcoves dedicated to different subjects like the coal and steel industry, the docklands and the city's beginnings. One station held a dollhouse with each side showing the progression of family life over the past two hundred years. The little rooms were decorated for the time period with hand carved wooden people. With the press of a button some parts of the people would start moving. The little boys sitting at the dinner table holding knives and forks bang their fists on the table. The modern woman typed loudly on her laptop while her husband was in the kitchen cooking.

Caitlin, Amy and Libby had a fun time rolling a dice which was just light dots projected on a table which you touched to roll, and then moving their pieces along a game board designed to relfect the history of Cardiff. The person with the train piece invariably won because it was so much more useful to the development of the city than the horse piece.

We exited the Cardiff Story just before it closed at 5:00pm. Not wanting to wander around Cardiff in the dark, we decided to end our day trip and return to the Cardiff Central train station. Luckily, we only had to wait on the train platform for about twenty minutes as the temperature had dropped considerably with the setting of the sun.

The nearly two hour train ride was uneventful. I wrote notes for my day to aid it writing blog posts later (this post in fact) and then spent the rest of the ride listening to an audiobook version of Peter Pan on my iPod.

Our first day trip was deemed a success. Our main goal of visiting the Doctor Who Experience was attained, and it never rained more than a brief sprinkle.  

Natural History and Brownies

Today I woke up and things were quite different from usual, not bad, just different. I got up at 9 am, took a shower, ate breakfast and just puttered around. At 11 am I went to see if my flatmates were awake. Caitlin opened her door and said that she was just getting up. It was only then that I remembered that Amy had gone to London yesterday to meet up with her parents and Libby had left early this morning to go to Scotland with her parents. So, it is just Caitlin and me in the flat this weekend. It is strange because the four of us have been almost constant companions for the past (almost) two months.

Earlier in the week Caitlin and I had already planned to do some exploring in Oxford over the weekend since it would just be the two of us. Our choices were the Botanic Gardens and/or the Pitt Rivers Museum. We did not decide where we were going until this morning when we checked the weather and it was only supposed to be a high of 48 degrees Fahrenheit. That is almost a 10 degree drop from yesterday and it is supposed to continue to be that cold for at least the next week. The weather here is finally turning frigid, and I am very glad I bought a coat at Primark on Wednesday (it is wine colored with scalloped detail and I absolutley love it).

The Pitt Rivers Museum is in a part of Oxford north of High Street where we had not yet explored. We walked along a two lane road that had a lot of cars, since I guess that area is not considered the City Centre (only buses, bikes and taxis are allowed in the City Centre during the day). The sidewalk was incredibly crowded, mostly with university students who were probably head to or from class as most of the buildings lining the road appeared to be more colleges of Oxford University.

After a bit of confusion about the signs to Pitt Rivers (one sign pointed left but I was positive it was supposed to be on the right. The first sign ended up being for parking for the museum), we made it to the museum. You walk in through a heavy wooden door and the first things you see are giant dinosaur skeletons. I was surrounded by bones and fossils and rocks. If I could have visited this museum at around age 7-11 I would have been in absolute heaven. During that time I changed back and forth from wanted to be an Egyptologist, archeologist, paleontologist and geologist. I collected fossils and rocks and they were my prized possessions.

Even at my current age I was positively giddy. A lot of the displays were designed to be touched. There were stuffed animals like a fox, pheasant, badger, and cheetah that visitors can pet. One adorable little girl with blond curls ran up to the stuffed Shetland pony saying in her British accent, "Look, Mummy, a Shetland pony. It's a Shetland pony." Little children with British accents just make me "Awww" in my head because they are so cute.

Caitlin and I slowly made our way around the room looking at all of the displays about rocks, dinosaurs, modern animals, and insects. I also took some time to appreciate the architecture. The glass ceiling stretched overhead, two stories up. It is all held up by carved granite columns and a diamond shaped weaving of metal supports.

The Pitt Rivers Museum is actually where Lewis Carroll, who lived in Oxford and lectured at Christ Church, got a lot of ideas for Alice in Wonderland. The museum has an entire display case with all of the animals featured in the stories, birds, lizards, and even a white rabbit. The Dodo bird has its own case with a skeleton of a Dodo and a model of what it would have looked like. I learned that Dodo birds are not naturally the large, round and clumsy animals that they are normally thought of as. In reality, the Dodos that were kept in captivity were given the wrong food so they grew obese.

In a separate room there is the collection of cultural artifacts. The room is three stories tall and filled to the brim with all manner of things from cultures around the world. There is pottery, clothing, model ships, musical instruments, models of traditional homes, woven baskets, oil lamps and much more. Caitlin and I played a little game of trying to guess what country, or at least what continent, the various pieces came from. There is so much to see that it would take days, if not weeks, to see it all.

It was amazing to see how similar items were that were from cultures on the other side of the world from each other. Many cultures use horns to communicate and create music. Many ended up with the same style of oil lamp, probably because the shape was the most efficient. It was like this one room showed how interconnected all people of the world are. All human beings are the same regardless of skin color or ethnicity.  In that room I felt, not like an American or a caucasian female, but simply a member off the human race, connect to everyone else in some way, past and present.

Before even finishing the ground floor, Caitlin and I both started to get hungry so we decided to visit the museum again another day (entry is free). We ended up at the Covered Market on High Street and chose to eat baguettes at Morton. The goat cheese on Caitlin's baguette reminded me of our four hour long study abroad orientation in May. That orientation was so long ago now, and the most memorable part was the snacks. Those snacks included goat cheese, crackers, fruit and brownies. One thought led to another, and suddenly I was craving brownies.

I knew that we had all of the ingredients to make brownies except for cocoa powder so I thought this would be a good opportunity for Caitlin to show me the Tesco she had found a ways down Cornmarket Street when she explored Oxford by herself the other day. The Cornmarket Tesco is not as spread out as the one on Cowley Road, instead it has two floors. We had to look in several places before we found the cocoa powder in the section with the coffee, tea and hot cocoa. With our last ingredient in hand, we headed back to the dorm.

The walk back was uneventful. The narrow trail from Pullen's Lane to our dorm, passes by the nursery, an area of land where people can plant gardens and vegetables. Today, someone was burning wood or leaves in a bonfire and the air held its earthy, burning smell. I knew that if I stopped and closed my eyes I would be able to perfectly picture myself standing outside my home in North Carolina, surrounded by tree draped in fiery hues. The brisk wind of Autumn and the smell of wood fires are two things that go perfectly together in my memories.

Back at the dorm we started baking our brownies. It was not difficult at all, just mixing a few ingredients together then pouring it into a pan. I waited the required time, 25-30 minutes, but the bottom was still gooey while the top seemed cooked. This seems to happen every time I have tried to bake here. The oven, which is super tiny, doesn't seem to cook the bottoms of things properly. We ended up cooking the brownies for an extra 15 minutes and I think they ended up a bit over cooked. However, they were still delicious and satisfied my brownie craving. We probably will get used to how the oven just in time for us to leave, but that is just the way things go sometimes.

Dublin Alphabet

Abraham House

Book of Kells

Comedy Crunch in the basement of a pub

Dead bog mummies at the Museum of Archeology

Elephant-footed residents in the hostel keep us awake

Flag of the United States hanging outside a building

Giant's Causeway was made by a giant fleeing to Scotland

Horns honking as pedestrians step out into traffic

Ice cream for free at the comedy show

Jarring seagull cries wake us up every morning

KC Peaches for lunch with Kaitlyn

Leprechaun Museum                     

Moving flats due to mold infestation

National Gallery closes after only 45 minutes

Oscar Wilde statues leers from his place on a boulder

Painting Alphonse Mucha's art nouveau pieces in the street

Queue for airplane seats because they are not assigned

Red O'Donnell, kidnapped and imprisoned in Dublin Castle

St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral for morning Mass

Trinity College

Use an ATM for the first time in my life

Vegetable samosas at O'Shea Pub

Walking tour around Dublin

taXis line up in an alley waiting for fares

Young girls in short skirts almost get hit by a car

Zigzag on crowded sidewalks with loose cobbelstones

A Weekend in Edinburgh: Day 2

Our first full day in Scotland, Libby, Amy, Caitlin, and I rose early and went to breakfast in the main common room. There was toast, fruit cocktail, yogurt, and whole fruit to eat, and coffee, hot tea, and Squash to drink. Squash is a concentrated orange drink (closer to Tang than orange juice) that you mix with water. When Libby bought a bottle of Squash when we first arrived in the UK we did not know about the watering down part and tried to drink the orange liquid plain from the bottle. It tastes like a liquid, super sugar orange flavored syrup, and not at all pleasant to drink.

There were many toast toppings to choose from including Marmite, chocolate hazelnut spread, apricot jam, blackcurrant jam, butter, and lemon curd. I decided to be adventurous and split my toast into fourths, each with a different topping. The four squares were spread with either blackcurrant jam, apricot jam, chocolate hazelnut spread, or lemon curd. The blackcurrant and lemon curd were new toppings to me. Blackcurrant is pretty close to blackberry jam in taste and appearance. It is a deep purple with small seeds that add a hint of crunch. The lemon curd tasted like I had scrapped out the filling of a lemon bar and spread it onto my toasted bread. It was a pale yellow and slightly gelatinous in texture. Personally, the name "lemon curd" is not very appealing because it brings to mind sour, curdled milk. I do not drink milk at all because it smells nasty when fresh, so soured milk is disgusting to an extreme.

Sanctuary of St. John's Episcopal Church
Photo by Amy

After eating we crossed the street to St. John's Episcopal Church, using our umbrellas to shield our bodies from the drizzle. Since it was Sunday we wanted to attend church to see how the service differed from ones we had been to in the United States. We plan to go attend a church service during all of our overnight trips. This particular service was a 9:30 am Choral Matins. Matins is a term normally by Protestant denominations to describe a morning prayer service.

The sanctuary was decorated with colored paper fish hanging from clear string. Each had writing or drawings by children on it. This was such a contrast to the rest of the church which was ornately detailed in the traditional style of churches. Since this was a Choral Matins, there was a lot of singing, both by the choir and by the attendees. The choir members of this church wore robes similar to those worn by the singers at Salisbury Cathedral. The robes were white with red under-robes peaking out from the sleeves, hem and neckline. They also wore a small ruffled collar encircling their necks.

There was also the recitation of the Apostle's Creed and I was proud that I remembered all of the words. At my Presbyterian church in the United States, we do not say the Apostle's Creed at every service like they seem to do here where churches are more traditional.

Near the end of the service collection was taken using small bags, instead of offering plates. The entire time there I noticed how nice it smelt. It was not floral but instead it was like the mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger from making gingerbread cookie. I am not sure if it was the lingering scent of incense, if the church even used it, or if it was the perfume of the elderly woman sitting in the pew behind me.

At the service's end we were invited to refreshments and asked to return the following week, but we explained that we were just visiting for the weekend. The man was quite insistent that we stayed for the 10:30 service but we managed to politely extricate ourselves to start our day of sightseeing.

Inside the National Museum of Scotland

Climbing the Mound, past the rail station, we made our way into Old Town, the more historic district of Edinburgh. First stop, the National Museum of Scotland for some cultural education. Learning about early humans in Scotland, animals of the world, and flatware design throughout the centuries made us all hungry and ready for lunch.

All of my companions are avid Harry Potter fans, so they were super excited to eat at the Elephant House Cafe. For those who don't know, the Elephant House is where J.K. Rowling penned the first words of a book that would grow to become an international sensation. She returned to the cafe many times in the course of writing the first book.

The small cafe is always crowded. The tables in the small eating area are pressed close together. The room is filled with elephant knickknacks and artwork. Our table was in the back corner next to a bookcase containing dozens of book, all about elephants, some factual, some novels, and some children's cartoons. The inside of the bathroom has become a shrine to The Boy Who Lived, with fans from all over the world writing quotes and good wishes on the walls.

At the cafe I had a very good baguette with a combination of some of my favorite toppings, mozzarella cheese, pesto, and olives. The bread in the UK always seems to taste better than the kind you get back home. We also ordered a pot of tea to share and I felt like I was truly embracing British culture, even though we were in Scotland at the time.

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The Scotch Whisky Tour began at 1 pm in a brick building neat the entrance to Edinburgh Castle. The first part was a short ride in carts shaped like large wooden barrels. Our ghostly tour guide (a projected image), lead us through the whisky making process from barely harvest to fermentation to aging in wooden barrels. From the ride we moved on to the whisky tasting.

All of our tour group arranged ourselves around a large, U-shaped glass table. Our guide, a real person this time, explained the four main types of Scottish whisky to us and we watched a short video on each kind. Each were supposed to have different undertones depending on the area in which the barely was grown and then made into alcohol. The lowlands were supposed to have undertones of citrus, highlands of spices, Speyside of bananas, and Islay of fire smoke. Since I do not drink, I chose lowlands to try because it is supposed to be the mildest in flavor.

The alcohol was served in glasses shaped specially so that you can stick your nose into the glass to smell the drinks aroma. I swirled the golden liquid and inhaled its scent with instructed. The smell was not unpleasant like garbage, nor was in pleasant like cooking food. To me it just smelt like rubbing alcohol, and not at all appealing. I very carefully tilted the glass back determined to get only the smallest taste. When the liquid slid across my tongue I could feel my face scrunching in a grimace. I tried desperately not to gag and start coughing as it burned a path down my throat. It did not want to look like an inexperienced child (though that is pretty much what I am in the area of drinking alcohol) in front of our fellow tour mates, all of whom were in their late twenties or older. My companions and I were the only ones in the group who were asked to show IDs to prove our ages. Libby was kind enough to finish my whisky for me so I did not have to drink more than a sip.

Oldest Bottles in the Whisky Collection
Photo by Amy

We moved on to the glass walled whisky collection room were hundreds of unopened whiskey bottles are on display. Even though none have ever been opened, some of the bottles were not completely full because their golden contents have evaporated over time. Eventually every single one will be empty. The two oldest bottles in the collection date from 1897 and 1904.

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We entered Camera Obscura: The World of Illusions, after meeting up with Libby's friend Cat. We spent nearly two hours exploring the narrow building several floors. There were optical illusions, a mirror maze and a giant rotating tube that make you fell like the floor is tilting even though it is actually still. My favorite part was the top floor where you could go out onto the roof and have an amazing view of Edinburgh. We were surrounded by domes, spires and other interesting architectural features. In the distance you could even see the ocean. For some reason I never thought about the fact the Edinburgh is situated on the coast, probably since coastal towns in the UK are much different from the costal towns on the East Coast of the United States. 

We finished the night at a Scottish pub called the Amber Rose. I ordered Chicken and Mushroom Pie which came with peas, chips (french fries) and gravy. The gravy was absolutely delicious. I was a little wary of it at first because I do not like the Southern gravy that is common at home. Instead of being thick and grey, this gravy was thin and brown. It was probably made out of chicken and/or mushrooms.  I poured it onto my pie and dipped my chips in it. I ate everything on my plate at that meal.