England: Oxford

Next we moved our base to Oxford; very many tourists. Most of the colleges have stiff ticket prices. The one place we actually were willing to pay, Radcliffe Camera library, was long booked up by Harry Potter fans. In the end, we managed to walk in a few colleges and attended evensongs at Christ Church and Magdalen College Chapel.

We stayed four minutes walking distance from the Ashmolean Museum and ended up going there everyday. Overall, highlights turned out to be the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, truly a cathedral to science, and Pitt Rivers Museum, highly unusual.

Oxford seemed very different from what I remembered from my brief visit to Cambridge 30 years ago.

Radcliffe Camera


The Main Quadrangle of All Souls College at the University of Oxford (1st below) and All Souls College Chapel (2nd).




The University Church of St Mary the Virgin


The Pissarro Gallery, Ashmolean Museum


The Pre-Raphaelite "Return of the Dove to the Ark" (1851) by Sir John Everett Millais, Ashmolean Museum


The Shrine of Taharqa, Ashmolean Museum


Cornmarket Street, the busy pedestrian shopping street.


Looking back at Magdalen College Chapel after Evensong.


"A Feature of Modern Life" - Every night, delivery guys hung out below our hotel window. Nice.


The not-so-busy Friday Morning Commute.


We happened to be in Oxford on Graduation Weekend.


The exterior of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History does not prepare you for the amazing interior.








Not to mention the adjacent Pitt Rivers Museum.






One evening we grabbed some street food at Najar's Place, an Oxford institution.






We walked by this timber-beamed building at least once each day.


We attended Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, entering beneath the Tom Bell Tower.


Students Entering Tom Quad for a "May Ball".


Finally, Sunday Cyclists.