Walking With Scholars

After our time in Bath, we headed to a town in between Bath and Oxford, Swindon, to stay for the night.  We ended up having a little extra time, so we went to see the new Hunger Games movie.  We laughed, as we remembered we saw the last movie in England during our time looking for houses last November. We joked as we now need to come back to England to see Part II.  We woke up on Sunday morning to drive a little less than an hour to Oxford.  We walked around the city for a bit enjoying all of the beautiful buildings.

Our weekend of famous authors continued as Oxford was known to house C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe) and J.R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings). These authors, along with a few others met at the pub, The Eagle and Child (The name of the pub is based on a famous myth).  They used to meet here to discuss literature and writing. Oxford was also known to house Alice Liddell, who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

 

Up next was a tour of one of Oxford's most famous libraries, Bodleian Library, which many of you will recognize as one of the places Harry Potter was filmed. The Divinity School was the first part of the library tour.  Our tour guide spent literally 30 minutes talking about the ceiling.  Each little piece the architect created had a story behind it.  Although it was beautiful, I think our tour guide might have spent a little too much time telling us about these details. For the Harry Potter fans, this room was used as the hospital in the first two movies.  In real history it was used as a school house that approximately 40 students attended lecture all taught in Latin.

Next on the tour was Duke Humfrey's Library, and no picture were allowed here.  Although, I would click on my link, as it is very impressive.  In Harry Potter, it was used as the Hogwart's Library.  The books were so incredibly old, and some were chained to parts of the desks as they were not allowed to leave the library.

We headed to Radcliffe Camera next, as it was another library in a separate building.  No pictures inside as well.  It was a more modern library, and the inside would be something you would see in a library in the states. Although the outside was pretty impressive, as it was a stand alone cylinder building. Students still use this library and other parts of the Bodleian Library.

Radcliffe Camera

 Not our best selfie, and I hesitated to even put it on the blog.  But hey, you have to have proof that we actually visit these places, right? Behind us is the Tower of the Five Orders, which is special because the detail is on the inside for those people of the university, rather than showing it off to the townspeople (boring old building on the other side facing the city).

We walked around the city, snapping photographs of other beautiful buildings and sights.  

 

The Bridge of Sighs on the left and a beautiful college building within the city. 

I'll end my post with HAPPY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR as this will be my last post of 2014, as we have travels in our future. Have no fear, 2015 will bring many new adventures, countries, and excitement! Until then.

On to our 2015 adventures...