So you study Facebook at Hogwarts?: Summer

I sent off a draft of my thesis for my advisor to review during the third week of summer, so I had a lot of free time on my hands to spend exploring Oxford. The Olympic torch also came to town this week.

I sent in a first draft of my thesis to my advisor on Monday afternoon. After leaving the library, I headed down to Cowley to check out the Olympic torch. I happened to stop myself right where they would be switching torch runners.

everyone trying to head out of Cowley

On Tuesday I diverged from typical lunches by going out to a good Asian restaurant. The guys at the table next to us were doing hot pot, and they were getting through an incredible amount of meat. They had 2 massive plates of raw meat, and I'm pretty sure they ate it all. It was impressive enough that I felt the need to include it in this week's post.

Later Tuesday evening, I met up at Turf Tavern with a future MSc student who was in town. She worked at Harvard with one of my classmates who had already left for the summer.

On Wednesday I spent a few hours in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford's famous museum of art and archaeology.

drawing of a mummy on sheets of glass

dolls in academic dress

old coins

the main hallway

instrument collection

a stairwell wall

porcelain collection

the view from the museum of the side street leading to the back entrance of St. Cross

On Thursday afternoon, I headed to dinner at the Trout with my friend Vince. The Trout is a pub about 2 miles into Port Meadow, a big commons land beside the Thames.

I had never been that far into the meadow. It was raining, but we decided to go anyway. About half an hour in, the actual path disappears and it is basically a cow path for the next half hour. It was incredibly muddy. I had rain boots, but Vince did it in sneakers, so he ended up very wet and muddy.

We saw a lot of cows along the way and passed the ruins of an old nunnery, Godstow Abbey.

We finally reached the pub, which looked like it was on a waterfall because of the lock. It is probably really nice when you can sit outside on a warm day. The food was good, and the inside of the pub was nice; it looked more like the lobby of a country inn than a pub. There were big windows overlooking the terrace, and there were many low tables with comfy chairs rather than regular restaurant tables.

We took a cab back into town instead of braving the forces of nature again.

I had college lunch on Friday with Kelsey, my St. Cross friend from Colorado. We were discussing places we still needed to visit in Oxford, and upon realizing we were both free that afternoon, we started visiting these places after lunch. We took a trip to the Olde Sweet Shoppe, a fun candy store on High Street.

Our next stop was the Oxford Botanical Gardens at the end of the High Street.

Punters along the edge of the garden

breaking to eat our sweets

tequila agave plants are massive

apparently the garden is allowed to grow cannabis

nice view of Magdalen tower

Next we went into the University Church of St. Marys and climbed to the top of the tower.

the Church is being renovated

All Souls College

Radcliffe Camera

down High Street

looking at High Street and St Aldates

going down

Then we went to check out the grounds of Trinity College. The back quad is visible through the side gates of the college, and I always thought it looked nice. If I was going outside to study, however, Balliol was closer, so I never made it to Trinity.

Later that evening I went to a pub in Cowley to meet up with another classmate and the future MSc student (the same girl from Tuesday).

On Saturday I went for afternoon tea at The Rose with Kelsey. Before I got to Oxford, Katherine from GU told me I needed to go there for tea. Kelsey also had a housemate that went there a lot, so we finally went. It was my first time actually going out for afternoon tea in England. We did the biggest afternoon tea, which came with mini sandwiches, a cake, and a scone. We got an extra scone and tea pot so we could split everything. The tea didn't come on tiered plates with lots of petit fours or anything, but it was good.

After tea, we ran into new graduates in Radcliffe Square. The D.Phils (PhD) have these really cool red robes. There were also a few brides walking around the square.

We then went to see St. John's and Somerville Colleges. St. John's is amazing and huge - talk about college envy. It's right across the street from St. Cross and next to the OII. The gardens just keep going and going, and the college is so big that we got lost.