After our weekend in the Lake District, we headed south to what for me is the Heart of High Learning, Oxford. While walking around the city, I was amazed by how much of the city is actually the University of Oxford. The University is actually made up of several dozen colleges. The class did our own walking tour of Harry Potter filming locations by heading to one of these colleges, Christ Church. At Christ Church College is climbed up the stairs used in the first film where Professor McGonagall meets the first year students to take them to the great hall. Interestingly enough, the stairs actually lead to the dining hall that inspired the design of the Great Hall. After our walking tour, we made our way to the Eagle and Child, the pub where the literary group the Inklings meet, including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In honor of the Inklings, I had a hard cider with my dinner.
The next morning we went to the small yet interesting Oxford University Press Museum. The Press is probably most well know for the Oxford English Dictionary. Surprisingly, there is no longer book printing in Oxford; book printing is actually done at other global locations. In the afternoon, we went to the Story Museum. A few of us checked out an exhibit called "26 Characters" where 26 authors dressed up as their favorite children's book character for portraits, as well as did interviews about writing, particularly writing children's books. As a class, we attended a printing workshop to learn more about the old printing process. There is a certain art in this printing method which is getting lost in today's digital age.
The following day, we took the train to Winchester. We started our day in Winchester at the Great Hall with King Arthur's Round Table. Though the table was probably actually built by King Edward I for a tournament he held there, the table makes for a good tale along with serving as an example of the role of Arthurian legends in English history. Kings used Arthur's legacy to try to build their own legacy, linking the two. After lunch, we toured Winchester Cathedral, where Jane Austen is buried.
There is no better way to spend a free day in Oxford than to explore some of the museums, many of which are free. To be honest, I could have used another day or two just to check out the free museums in Oxford. The first museum we went to was the impressive Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. In our time there, I was only able to explore two of the five floors with exhibits. Then we went to the smaller Museum of the History of Science, popular for a blackboard with Einstein's writing from a lecture on it. A friend and I decided it was worth it to book tickets for a tour of the Bodleian Library. Though the tour was short, I loved getting to see what can be considered the "Heart of the University of Oxford," the Divinity School, which just so happened to be used as the infirmary in a couple of the Harry Potter films. The Divinity School was the first lecture hall of the university. We also saw the first section of the library, where during the Reformation almost all three hundred books were burned. The guide said something along the lines of ideas being more dangerous, because the decoration of the Divinity School below remained relatively undamaged. After our tour, we meet the others at the Museum of Natural History, where the dodo bird remains are found, and the Pitt River Museum. I could have spent several more hours in the Pitt River Museum which housed different cultural artifacts from around the world.
The next day we went to Blenheim Palace, the only place with the name palace that is not royal or owned by the Church. Today it is the home of a duke. Winston Churchill was born there. The massive building has extensive gardens that go with it. We spent a large portion of the day touring the palace and exploring the gardens.
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