Oxford

[I've left this post so late that I've alr gone to Cambridge. Think this still deserves a post for itself haha.]

Oxford wasn't boring, but it wasn't all that exciting either.

Return tix were cheap so we got up early on a Sunday morning to go to a place well-known across the world as home of some of the smartest minds around. [ICL beat Oxford to 2nd this year though ^^] Slept almost all the way there.

We came into Oxford before 10am, and some of my first and best impressions of the place was formed by these:

Like spray paint against the sky.

Brings to mind elmo.

There's beauty in the simple things - not always, but stopping to look is sometimes rewarding.

First up, the Bodleain Library - or in a more commercial sense, the Harry Potter Library. I was gonna have to take their word for it since the library was closed to visitors :( Same for the Great Hall in Christ Church. So the second impression I got was that we spent a lot of time visiting the outside of places. I can't rmb if these places were used as filming locations or whether the sets were modeled after them, but it would've been nice if we got to go in.

The outside of the library.

Some more wandering and we arrived at a covered market where we had lunch, and here I learnt that it's cheaper to dabao than to eat in. Apparently you pay for a space to eat your food. Works for me haha.

Another part of our plan was to rent bicycles and cycle to {insert forgotten place here} about 2.5 hours outside of Oxford and back. There were plenty of barriers to this plan. Firstly, the cycle shops here are no ECP rental giants. The one we visited had only 3 cycles for rent. Secondly, sunset was getting earlier and even at that time, 5 hours cycle meant returning in darkness. So we scrapped the plan :(

Instead, we spent the rest of the day wandering (some more) around Oxford on foot. Good company helped dull the mundane-ness, found myself laughing at quite a few random things [I can't rmb what exactly anymore, I just rmb laughing] because someone started and set the whole group off. Would've spent more time in the Oxford Musuem of Natural History, but simply flitted around the aisles. There's always the London one which I haven't been to anyway. Brought to mind the internship days, where the 3 of us could spend hours in museum exhibitions coz we literally read through everything.

Ended up walking through a park and deeper into a trail area. Wasn't expecting this sort of outdoor stuff in Oxford, but outdoor stuff is usually pretty :)

That... pretty much rounds up the Oxford experience. It's a small, quiet place - much like a prettier Derby I feel.