In the morning, we woke up slowly and headed out the door to walk to downtown Oxford. Since the place we were staying was in Cowes, it was only a 30 minute walk into town. But it was a cold one, though! Haha, but we are tough. Anyway, when we made it into town, we first went to the Covered Market. It was fairly early that we stopped by so there weren’t too many shops open. They looked like they were mostly food though. We were kind of hoping that we could find a place that would offer some cool unique touristy things that we could buy. Oh well. While we were there, Ang got some strawberry and some jam doughnuts (she really loves those for some reason :P). I went to McDonald’s for breakfast. 🙂
After we ate breakfast, we walked to the shop where the free walking tour started. The walking tour was really good. We had a tour guide that was super enthusiastic and funny. He also had a voice that carried really well too, so that was fun. He took us on a two-hour walking tour around the town, explaining the significance of each site and telling us stories. It was really interesting to hear the storied history behind the place. My favorite factual tidbit was that the reason the Oxford was bombed was that Hitler really liked the town and planned to make it his headquarters when he won the war. Interesting! While on the tour, we took note of a couple places that we wanted to go back to look at. We first got lunch, though, at a yummy sandwich baguette place. We went to McDonald’s to eat because we wanted a place that was warm to sit and eat. After we ate, I got a Mayo Chicken and a double cheeseburger to make a McGangbang. It was good, but just not as good as in the States. 😛 We then looked at a suit at Debanhams that I liked a lot and checked out a few souvenir shops where we got a few things.
After that, we went inside to look at the Weston Library. Inside there, there was an original copy of the Magna Carta, which was pretty neat. The tour guide was telling us earlier that the Oxford University has millions of books (I can’t remember the exact number but I want to say 14 million). Anyway, after that, we went checked out the grounds of All Souls College and then walked to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Outside of the church is the place (door, specifically) where J.R. Tolken got the inspiration for Aslan (a door to Brasenose College on St. Mary’s Passage) and the lamp as well. Pretty cool. The church was pretty cool inside as well. We paid 6 pounds to climb the really narrow stairs to the top of the church, which gave us a pretty good view of the city.
We then headed to Christ Church hoping that we could make it for a tour where we could see the Hall that inspired the hall in the Harry Potter films. Unfortunately, it seemed that they closed the tours by like 4 p.m. or something because by the time we got there, the doors were closed. I was really bummed on that, but I guess there was nothing I could do about that. After being bummed, we decided to head back to the place we were staying and to take a route along the Christ Church meadow and the Thames river. It was a really nice walk and Angela even got a picture right beside a swan that was swimming by. She then started tossing grass at it to see if it would eat it, but the wind kept blowing it back to her and the swan started making noises like it wasn’t entertained. Got a good video of that.
In the evening, we then headed to the old Oxford flat to pick up the missionaries. It seemed to be the only place on my mission that missionaries were still living at, so it was good to learn they were still there. 🙂 Anyway, a lot had changed in the area of the flat as they had torn down as old shopping mall that was next door. It was weird seeing all of that dismantled. When the missionaries finally made it, we headed off Jane Wangeci’s home, which was the same place that she had always been. I had the privilege of teaching her to baptism when I was serving there and had heard that she was active in the church for a year or so before going inactive. As such, I was really hoping to see her even though the ward had told me that they hadn’t been able to make contact with her in a good long time. Nevertheless, she actually answered! It was good to see her, but it was only for a short moment as she told us that she had just headed to bed and she would be around to visit tomorrow when we came around at 11 a.m. As it turns out, she never was home when we came around that next day, which was really disappointing, but I am grateful that I did have a chance to see her even for a split moment.
After that, the missionaries stayed in the area and we headed off to get a kebab at a shop in Blackbird Leys that I remember being my favorite in the mission. Haha, it was funny because it wasn’t as amazing as I remember it being, but I think that was because I got the smaller size and the proportions were a bit off. It was still good though. After pigging out with that and making the car smell of garlic sauce and chips, we picked up the missionaries to drive them home and headed back to the flat where Ang did homework (school had started up again that week) and I watched some British telly.
