Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Oxford scholar , Harry Potter and Pies and Pims.

Yesterday started with another battle through the Tube out to Paddington station to get the Train to Oxford . One little line mistake caused us to do a last minute evacuation to get the next tube or we would end up in Hicksvillle. Once in Paddington Station , the very helpful English workers assisted us in Ticket purchasing....i seriously think that some English people literally don't understand ENGLISH!.
The trip took about 50 minutes to get there with the highlight being going through the beautiful town of Slough, the town that the TV show , The Office is set. Drab is the word that comes to mind.

I really was not sure what to expect and thought it may have been a waist of a day but we did want to get out of London to have a look elsewhere so Oxford it was. We left the station and walked to the centre of the town and grabbed a sight map to see what this town had to offer other than just colleges . In the Lonely Planet it mentioned a bar called the Turf Tavern that was a locals bar that was worth having a look. ( I'm sure putting it in the Lonely Planet will not keep it a locals bar for too long). We walked into some of the college grounds and took some great shots of some cracking old buildings and churches and libraries and a Crypt! a bit creepy.

Getting hungry i used my super sense of directions to locate the Turf Tavern, it was down a side alley through a crack in the wall , past some bins and there you were. It was a cool old pub in the middle of all these old building with a couple of outside terraces, 5 foot ceilings and about 20 different beers on tap. We got a seat outside and i ordered 2 of their local beers, Hooky Bitter and a Turf Tavern Summer Ale. Jess did not like either of these so i unfortunately had to drink them both while she went off to order a jug of Pimms. Jess things to tick off on her European Summer was to have a Pie in an English Pub so the food order was made easy. It was a beautiful warm day sitting in the super cool little pub eating Pie and drinking Pimms.

After lunch we went in search of some more photo opportunities.
There were tours going everywhere with guides talking crap but all Jess wanted to find was the Hall that they filmed Harry Potter in ( or designed the set from this Hall ?? ) We found the building that it was supposed to be in but they were charging to get in and saying the hall was closed, jess tried to sneak in but i was being an old fart . We walked down to the next old building and Jess just walked past the booth and kept going i was forced to follow, there were some great gardens and buildings . As we kept walking through there was a blackboard sign saying ' the hall is open for visitors, Bang , Jess was off and in the hall in a flash. It was the Hall that she was searching for. It looked awesome, got some great shots.

After seeing her highlight we thought we had seen all we needed to see in Oxford so we had a parting cider in The Red Lion and made our way back to the train to head back into London.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not sure if Adam conyeyed my excitement of the Harry Potter 'Great Hall' well enough.. so let me just say - Wow! Hoorah!

    I cant believe people actually get to eat their food in this room!!
    There was signs up saying "Please return your trays after your meal". Are you serious? Students ACTUALLY eat dinner in here! Amazing!

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