OXFORD 3: Taking a bus! More stairs, views, atmosphere

 

Panorama shot of Radcliffe Camera from the top of University Church

Th 12 May

Taking a bus!

We started off today by taking a local bus to get to central Oxford, instead of driving and dealing with parking. Fortunately, there is great public transportation—on the street by our lodging a bus comes by every 4 minutes or so during the day, and even in the evening it still runs every 8 minutes or so. Buses are double decker, which is fun. We climb up to the top level, to enjoy the view from there. 

In an ideal situation, we'd be staying in central Oxford and could walk everywhere. but we're about two miles out, so it's pretty far to rely on walking alone. 

It says to wear a face covering but almost no one did,  including the driver

Our bus There are lots and lots of buses, you see them all the time.

More stairs and views

Once we got off in central Oxford, we started walking around some more. I am gradually getting a better sense of the city and where things are. We started off looking for the "Radcliffe Camera," one of the standard Oxford sights (shown at the top of this post). On the way there we saw the Bridge of Sighs, where a fellow American asked us to take her picture for her. She rewarded us, not only by taking our picture for us, but also by telling us to check out the view from the University Church tower, for only 5 pounds. 

We wandered over there, and once again, climbed winding stairs up a clock/bell tower. After having done the Bath Abbey climb, I figured this would be a piece of cake. It was in fact, shorter and there was even a metal handrail of sorts. At the top though, the railing was lower, and the space you stood in was quite narrow; while it still felt safe enough, I found myself feeling dizzier than I had at Bath Abbey. It was great to get the view  though, and we were early enough that we had the narrow walkway all to ourselves. I would hate to be there with a crowd.

In the photos below, the climb took us to the walkway at the top of the church clock face. That's where we  looked out from. In the photo looking down, notice how many buses there are! The photo at the top of this post was taken from the church, too.

Lunch and a few COVID comments

We met Allie at the Gloucester Green outdoor Market for lunch, where you can pick up a bite to eat at any of a number of food stalls. It was bustling! Allie got Korean, Doug got Indian, and I had an Italian arancini. 

We overhear more different languages here at Oxford than we did at Bath. That is not surprising, given that students at Oxford come from all over; however we might have heard more languages at Bath, too, in pre-COVID times. Our walking tour guide in Bath mentioned that it's been mostly British tourists after COVID shut down international travel.

Attitudes towards COVID precautions seem quite relaxed here, as in Bath, and we've been pretty relaxed, too. You do still see a few people wearing masks here and there, mostly Asians and/or older people. At Gail's coffeehouse, the cashier was masked, but no other staff. At a Thai restaurant we went to, our server was masked. Our bus drivers have not been masked—though they sit behind a plexiglass barrier we suspect was installed for COVID—and most passengers have not been masked either. To a very large extent, things seem "normal" except every now and then you get hints that things aren't quite, or that things haven't been normal that long. 

One of the hints, besides the tourist info centers disappearing, is that a friend wrote us with two restaurant suggestions in Oxford. It turns out one place (Eagle and Child) closed in March 2020, when COVID started. It hopes to renovate and reopen with added hotel rooms, but it will take at least two years and its future is still uncertain. Another place (The Nosebag) has ended up closing, after 51 years in business.

Oxford schools, the Bodleian Library

Map showing college locations

Even though, as I mentioned yesterday, Oxford University is intermingled with the town rather than having a discrete, contiguous campus, the central area is much more densely full of Oxford colleges than I had initially appreciated.  Oxford currently consists of 30 colleges, each of which functions like a small sub-school; they're much more than just a "dorm". They typically are inward-focused, with one or more inner courtyards, and only a few are open to the public. It's hard to get a sense of Oxford just from the outside. I feel that we have barely scratched the surface.

Yet, for whatever reasons, we haven't felt that motivated to take a general tour, even though we found the walking tour in Bath very useful (of course that one was also free). We were willing to book a specific tour, though, to get to see the "shouldn't miss" sights of the Bodleian Library, only available via tour. It was well worth it.

What you see, in the 30 minute tour we opted for, is only two sites that are associated with the Library: the Divinity Hall and Duke Humfrey's Library. These sites are spectacular though, and you also get to hear and understand more about the entire Library and the history of it. As shown in the photos below, the Divinity Hall is incredibly atmospheric; so is Duke Humfrey's Library, but photos aren't allowed there (Google images of it if you want). Both sites have been used in Harry Potter films; the Divinity Hall has been used in some other films as well. 

Next post:

More Oxford tomorrow, then a special field trip with Allison on Saturday...  

Also, please feel free to reply to L3_Blog with any comments, suggestions, questions if you have them. I've gotten a few (like the restaurant suggestions mentioned above) and it's fun to get them. 

OXFORD 2: Resting, more ancient history, walking about

Both old & new signage in Oxford

We 11 May

Low-key morning, parking in Oxford

We started the day off in a refreshingly low-key way; after our hotel breakfast, we just relaxed in our room til it was time to meet Allie for lunch. I even napped a bit (perhaps because of late nights blogging...). 

It took some back-and-forthing to get our lunchtime rendezvous set. We're not familiar with how parking works here, but neither is Allison, because she doesn't have a car here. There are official "car parks" but it turns out they charge different rates, and some can be quite expensive. We used one today which charged 6 pounds an hour (roughly $7.50/hr) for a maximum of two hours. Later, in the evening a different garage was only 4.5 pounds for the whole evening or 9.5 pounds for about 3 hours earlier in the day. These still aren't as bad as SF prices can be, but they were more than we expected!

We had a lovely ramen lunch, and then some treats at Gail's bakery, a favorite spot of Allie's. I very much enjoyed my pistachio lemon rose cake (shown with a piece of Doug's scone), but I was particularly impressed that their menu includes three kinds of made-to-order "porridge". 

More ancient history

Emperor Augustus; colored version
shows how the statue is believed
to have been colored in its day

After lunch, Allie went off to class while we ended up at the Ashmolean Museum, a well-known public museum in Oxford. It originated with a cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave the University of Oxford in 1677. It is the second oldest university museum in the world, and Britain's first public museum.

It is a high-quality museum, but the collection is somewhat eclectic, including both art and archaeological objects, and often driven by what the museum has been given. For instance, there is a significant collection of Greek marble statues that were originally collected by the Earl of Arundel; there is an actual Sumerian temple that was gifted to Oxford and painstakingly moved here in 1936, using 200 crates.

The collection includes objects up into the modern day, but having spent so much time recently thinking about the Romans in Bath, we naturally gravitated to the Greek/Roman/Egyptian galleries.

Entire Sumerian temple, dating to about 680 B.C.

Oxford impressions

Much of the rest of the time, we just wandered the streets of Oxford. Oxford has much more of a variegated city aesthetic than Bath. There are lots of elegant and impressive old buildings, but they're mixed in with more modern buildings; there isn't as much a sense of a unifying aesthetic as there is in Bath. Also, the University is very much mixed in with the rest of the city, the way Berkeley and much of Harvard are, whereas Cambridge England (from what we remember) has more of a separate campus, like Stanford. 

The following photos give some sense of what caught my eye today.

Tower dates back to 1000-1050 CE,
oldest surviving building in Oxford

I liked The Crown next to McD's

This is actually about the double decker buses!

Christ Church

Way to build tall chimneys!

Trinity College

This is where the Tourist Info center
once was. The one in Bath had closed,
too... perhaps both victims of COVID?

This is for Faculty of History

Next Post

Tomorrow we hope to do some more organized walking around, to see particular colleges, and maybe to do a river walk (suggested in a Lonely Planet guidebook).  We are also thinking of trying to take a local bus!

BATH/OXFORD: Bathing in Bath, car challenges, Allison!

This photo of Thermae's rooftop pool is from their website.
Phones/cameras were not allowed during bathing, understandably.
In the back, on the right, you can see Bath Abbey.

Thermae Bath Spa

We wanted to emulate the ancient Romans by immersing ourselves in Bath's steamy mineral waters, too. You can no longer do that at the original Roman Bath site—it is run as a museum now, not a bathhouse—but you *can* soak in Bath's same mineral waters at Thermae Bath Spa, located near the original Roman Baths, and sourced from the same spring.

This photo I took on Sunday, during a free
city walk. We were gazing up at the spa participants
in their white robes, looking like gods on high...

Yesterday we tried to go around 4pm; we'd been assured earlier in the day that we could get in as a walk-in up to 5pm, but it turned out an issue had come up with one of their two main pools, reducing their capacity. They were only accepting pre-bookings. We decided to try again today and happily, both pools were working and there was no problem getting in. 

What was it like? When you sign in, you receive a nice long white robe, a towel, flip-flops in your size,, and a special stretchy wristband. You change into the swimsuit you brought, and pack all your gear into a locker, the "key" to which gets electronically transmitted to your wristband. Then you are free to wander the five floors of the building. The main floors of interest were a lower level pool, a rooftop pool, and a second floor "wellness suite". Other floors include the changing area, and rooms for additional spa treatments, like massages, which we did not get.

Photo of inside pool, again from their website

We spent time in the lower, inside pool, then in the rooftop pool, then in the wellness rooms. You get about two hours to roam about, which was enough. The water was very comfortably warm, but it wasn't as hot as we expected, nor did it seem all that "minerally" (despite having *42* minerals according to their promotional materials). Still, it was nice to have a good soak, and both pools also had some jacuzzi-like jets in some areas, and a small water spray. My favorite wellness room was the Georgian steam room. It was very densely steamy in there; you could barely make out that there were any other people in the room.

I wouldn't say Thermae is a can't-miss experience, but it was pleasant and certainly thematic with being in Bath.

Car challenges and Doug in a fancy waistcoat

We originally planned to pick up Doug's booked rental car right after the Thermae visit. However it turned out the car they were intending to give us had a problem—the tire had gotten blown out or something. The only other possible cars were stick shifts and not back yet! We ended up having to kill about 3.5 hours until one was ready. We spent the extra time checking out the Georgian "Assembly Rooms" plus a very nice Fashion Museum. 

One section of the Fashion Museum included replicas of old fashions, which you could try on for yourself. I would have liked to try something on, too, but a group of young women were monopolizing all the women's clothing!

Finally, around 4pm, Doug was able to confirm that they had a rental car for us, and we Ubered over to the rental car place to pick up what turned out to be a bright orange Vauxhall car (Vauxhall is a British car company). We've noticed that a lot of the cars we see on the roads are small cars, and we can understand why. Many roads in England are quite narrow! 

Doug has been quite a trooper in daring to attempt driving here. I'll say more about roads and signs and driving in another post; for now I'll just say that we made it to Oxford in about two hours (it would normally take closer to 1.5 hours, but roads were busy and we missed some turns).

Allison sharing some of her 
mint tea with me, at a lovely
place called Kazbar

Next post

Tomorrow is an Unplanned Day! We are spending five full days in the Oxford area; we can afford to be relaxed about our planning. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? One thing it's likely to bring is the first significant rain of the trip...

BATH: Roman bathhouse life, Medieval church stair climb

I'm standing by the entrance to the Roman Baths, 

behind me is the Bath Abbey church. These top

two attractions are right by each other.

Bath has been an interesting, lively place to be for the past two-and-a-half days. It is physically very attractive, due to a consistent architectural look and a lovely natural setting, and it is also very walkable and engaging, with lots of small shops and eateries, and lots of people watching opportunities. Bath was deemed a World Heritage Site in 1987, by UNESCO. 

The Roman Baths

I have to start with talking about the Roman Baths, because that is Bath's biggest claim to fame. Bath is naturally in an area with hot mineral water springs. The Romans revered the presence of this magical hot water, and they built a temple near it in 60-70 AD, to worship Sulis Minerva (shown at right). 

Over succeeding years, an extensive bathing complex was added, next to the temple. After the Romans left Britain in 410 AD, the baths fell into disrepair and were buried as land filled in. Over time, other bathing facilities used the spring water, in the 12th century and later, but the full extent of the original Roman baths was not discovered until 1878. In the time since then, much work has been done to excavate and appreciate the wonders of the original Roman complex.

Plan of the original Roman Baths complex: The square at

upper left was the temple, the middle circle was where the 

spring water came up (and still does), the big rectangle is

what's visible now; you get to see remnants of the rest.

When we paid to enter the "Roman Baths" on Sunday at 3pm, I had no idea that the exhibits and museum would be so extensive. It includes excavated areas of hot rooms, changing rooms, temple altars, drainage systems, and more. You are given an audio handset which provides narration about what you are seeing, and you also view video reenactments at various locations. We spent three hours there!

One of my favorite displays was small metal inscriptions people had thrown into the hot springs, called "curse tablets". They contained requests for help with some issue, often petty theft, and some are quite colorful, e.g. "Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess' temple." There's a great Wikipedia article specifically about the curse tablets found at Bath, and there's even a Youtube video about how to make your own curse tablet!

If you're not interested in history at all, this place may not be for you. But because you control the audio handset (you don't have to listen to everything), and because they work creatively at making the past come alive, it's hard not to be intrigued and impressed. 

This swimming pool area is the most commonly depicted part of the Roman Baths,
as it is outside. Only the pool itself and pillar bases are original; everything higher
is of a later construction. The original pool had a roof over it, in Roman days,
and presumably no algae!

This "Immersion Pool" room  has built-in seating, just like  a modern hot tub!

I'm watching a video re-enactment of women changing, displayed over the ruins of what was the changing room

Bath Abbey

The second most notable feature of Bath is Bath Abbey, a beautiful medieval age church built in a central area of Bath. There's records of there being a church in the same spot since the 900's AD, but the current one was built around 1500-1600 AD, with many significant updates made later (e.g. flying buttresses and fan vaulting were both added in the 1800's). The tall church is a helpful landmark in the city, and the wide plazas on two sides of it are full of people relaxing on the benches and listening to a varied range of busking performers.

It is a very beautiful church, outside and inside. During open hours, anyone can go inside, but on Monday we also decided to pay the additional fee to get a "Tower tour" and actually climb to the top! There were something around 200 steps to get all the way to the top, and I was glad I've actually been regularly doing stair climbs (at a parking garage in Palo Alto), because the tour guide ascended at quite a speedy clip—and the other seven people on the tour (other than Doug) were probably all 30 or more years younger than me! We climbed ~120 steps to get to the bell ringing room, then another 50 or so to get to the bells themselves, then another 30 or so to get to the very top. 

The stairs

The bell ringer room.
One way bells are rung is pulling
on the ropes currently looped up high.

In the actual room with the bells!

Us at the very top! Looking out, at bottom left is the open-to-the-air swimming pool part of the Roman Baths which is shown earlier in this post.

We did other cool things in Bath, too; you'll have to just ask us about our visits to the Circus and the Crescent, about the woman who dared to paint her door yellow, about "hanging loos" and about seeing a redwood, a sequoia, and a dawn redwood tree in Sydney Gardens...

Next Post and Question Answer

Tomorrow we hope to try doing a version of Roman bathing ourselves in the morning... we tried today, but for various reasons it didn't work out. After that, we'll be renting a car and Doug will drive us to Oxford! 

In the meantime, according to a Pew research article, the answer to the question I posed yesterday, "What % of Americans have never been abroad?"is 27%. It was actually smaller than I thought, but if you add in the percent of Americans who have only gone to one another country (19%, likely to be Canada and/or Mexico), the total number goes to 46%.

It was nice to chat with the Queen.

A nice 12-hour sleep

Our lovely B&B breakfast—I'm 
having Scottish oats laced w/ whiskey!

This will be a short post because during the time I usually work on the blog (evenings/late night), I was sound asleep! Not only did I not time shift before the trip, as Doug did, but I also stayed up late Saturday, doing the previous post about arriving in England. Which means I ended up being pretty exhausted by the end of Sunday. I crashed last night, after we came home from dinner (~8pm) and slept quite soundly til Doug woke me up for our lovely B&B breakfast this morning (~8:30am). The plus side is I think I'm caught up to England time now!

I will just post a couple of quick things and catch up more later today. The first thing is the answer to question I posed in the last blog: Why did I take this photo, reprised here? If you look at it closely, it's because all five cars in the photo are parked nose-to-tail to each other. I've noticed that parking pattern fairly often. I guess if you see a good spot on the other side of the street, you don't need to do a U-turn, you just sidle over and park! 

Next Post

In the next post, I will hopefully catch up on what we did Sunday, which  was a walking tour of Bath, and a visit to the Roman Baths museum. The latter visit was quite spectacular, much more involved than I had expected! Today we will see more of Bath, and then Tuesday it's on to Oxford, and Allison! Here's a question for today: What % of Americans have never been abroad?