The Top Floor Flat

This has been a weekend of museums! Oxford seems to be full of them and, best of all, most of them are free or very inexpensive for students (shh, don’t tell, I’m still using my Colby ID card because it doesn’t have my graduation date printed). On Sunday morning, I took a tour of the Oxford Castle, a structure built in the early eleventh century and has been used as a prison since then (it just stopped housing prisoners in 1996 and at that point it was opened to the public for the first time). I took a tour that led us up to the top of the tower which over looked the whole city – clearly at one point in history it was used to keep an eye out for invading armies but yesterday it offered a great vantage of the Oxford business school to which I’ll be applying in a few years. We then went down into the crypt, supposedly the most haunted place in Oxford and got to view the old (and newer) jail cells. After that, I got to go on a special tour (they’re only running it a few months and only on the weekends) of a new area of the castle they’re just beginning to excavate.

After the castle tour, I went over to the Ashmolean museum, another Victorian style museum with a little of everything. It had some of the most eclectic collections I’ve ever seen including a wall of fob watches, a wing full of Egyptian artifacts, a room of porcelain painted plates, and a hall of master painters including Monet, Picasso, and Cézanne. I ended up spending a lot more time there than I expected and it was getting a bit late in the afternoon by the time I left to walk through Christ Church College (the Harry Potter college) but didn’t feel like paying the L5 entrance fee to go inside a few of the buildings so walked around the meadow and down to the water where there were hundreds of students enjoying the nice weather (the weather has been spectacular this weekend).

I was quite tired so after some more Indian food for dinner I had an early night getting ready to check out of my B&B and head back to London the next day.

Today, I started off by going back to the Oxford Museum of Natural History and Pitt-Rivers Museum again because I hadn’t really had time to view them properly when I visited the Friday before. I ended up spending the entire morning there and still felt like I hadn’t see most of what they had to offer. It was great! The Pitt-Rivers museum had an exhibit on body art and appearance and covered all styles of bodily adornment from all over the world. It was really interesting and they had some very unique artifacts.

After that, I had lunch with Mikki and Sophie, the girls who took care of me on my birthday, and we ate in this cute little coffeeshop in Gloucester Green Square. They’ve been so nice to spend so much time with me when they have finals this week! After lunch, I said goodbye to my new friends and headed to the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments which was such a strange little building! I thought it was going to be a proper museum but it was a side room off of the Oxford music buildings and I had to ring a bell to be let in. It was a fantastic collection, though, and there were some really beautiful old instruments.

Now, I’m back on the Oxford Tube, heading into London. I’m spending the night with my mom’s friend Mimi again but I really hope I have a place to live before the end of the week! I’m going to take this week to get settled with house and job for the next three months. Let’s see how that goes! Besides, there’s plenty of museums to keep me busy in London alone! 🙂