Oxford

Today we went to Oxford.  What a great place!  Oxford is composed of several different collages such as New College and Christ's Church College.  The colleges are where the students eat and sleep.  Each student has an assigned tutor, and this tutor is a fellow of their college.  Each college has it's own library and sports teams.  I believe the lectures are all held in common lecture halls, however, and there is a common testing center.  The earliest students began studying at Oxford as early as 1066 ad, or so, when the English students attending the French universities were forced back to England due to a conflict between the English and the French.  The buildings and architecture there are beautiful and the history of the place is quite inspiring.

Christ's Church College.  The dining hall here was the inspiration behind the Harry Potter dining hall in the movies.  It was closed when we got there so we didn't get to go inside, but the outside was beautiful enough!

Many of the colleges are built around these "quadrangles", or grassy inner courtyards.  The earliest students were aristocratic Normans and not much liked by the Saxon villagers.  Many students died at the hands of the villagers, so the setup of the colleges with the buildings surrounding this quadrangle was designed to protect the students.  I believe this is the quadrangle of New College.

 
Some scenes from Harry Potter were filmed in this college.  You may recognize the corridor above.

An Oxford Street.  Love the architecture!

This was my highlight of the trip.  The Eagle and Child was the pub where CS Lewis and his friends and colleagues (including J R R Tolkien) met on a weekly basis for over 20 years, discussing their literary works and ideas, and otherwise philosophizing together.  Oh, how I would have liked to be a fly on the wall!  We ate dinner here.  The food was pretty good and the atmosphere was fun, a good, old fashioned English Pub.

 Yesterday was our anniversary.  Two years!  I came home to these, so beautiful!

 DJ took me to dinner at this restaurant.  The food was delicious!  Seriously, amazing.  Supposedly traditional English food, but all our waiters had French accents, so we're a little suspicious.

And we finished our anniversary celebration with a walk through Hyde Park.  Aren't these flowers beautiful?!      What a perfect night :)