As my sister’s been here in the U.K. for over a month now without leaving London, we decided it was time to take a short trip. Oxford won out as our destination by virtue of the fact that it’s easy to get to and none of us have been there before. Our friend Ian decided to come along (he’s English, but he’d only been there once before when he was a little boy). Here we go…

Buses run from London to Oxford just about every 15 minutes of every day, so we decided to catch one Saturday morning from Shepherd’s Bush. Here’s Amy, Ian, and Snookums waiting for it to arrive. (Snookums isn’t tired; I just timed the photo badly.) There was some commotion when the bus arrived, as this elderly couple tried to jump the queue and a young guy at the end called them on it. Luckily another bus pulled up at that very moment, so we fled before we found out how it ended.

We arrived in Oxford an hour later and headed for our bed and breakfast to drop off our stuff. This is Bramley House, where we stayed. It was tiny (there were only four guest rooms), but clean and nice and available. (Helpful tip for you travellers: don’t try to book accommodation in Oxford the day before you leave. It’s nearly impossible.) Amy had a nice little single, while Snookums and I shelled out for the swanky en suite double. (We like to pretend we’re extravagant “Internet people” every now and then.) Ian was only staying for the day, so no room for him.

Here’s Amy and Ian waiting for the bus to take us back into the city centre. The weather was cloudy, but it didn’t look like it was about to rain just yet. (Why can’t I take a trip with good weather?)

Here’s Snookums. In case you’re wondering, he’s letting his hair get long so that he can shave it into a Mohawk or something when we have our next party. Until then, it’s a rather cute little mullet.

So we get into the city center and immediately we hear a large crowd chanting. Amy’s like, “Oh, it’s a parade!” Then we see the police on motorbikes coming down the road towards us.

It was a protest! A couple hundred people were protesting some lab where beagles’ legs are broken. They even had a coffin with little stuffed doggies in it. The cops had sealed off most of the side streets and were just trying to keep things from getting out of hand. Damn… that sort of thing never happened at ND.

Here’s the flyer some Rastafarian handed me, in case you’re curious. Now I’m not arguing for the torture of animals, but this thing doesn’t back up its claim that the experiments are “useless.” I mean, it’s not like people would just do that sort of thing for fun. There’s gotta be a reason, whether economical or safety or whatever. I just with they’d made more of an effort to present all the information, as opposed to trying to ply me emotionally with some (literally) puppy-dog eyes. (Besides, I’m not that fond of dogs.)

Protesting makes us hungry, so here we are having some sandwiches at the “Alice in Wonderland” Tea Shoppe. In case you didn’t know, Lewis Carroll taught at Oxford for many years and wrote the famous stories while he was there.

Snookums has a particular tea ritual, where he turns the teapot around three times before pouring it. It’s cute. Anyway, so Lewis Carroll (or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, his real name) lived at Christ Church in Oxford and got to be friends with the three little daughters of Dean Liddell, including one named Alice. (You can see a picture Carroll took of her here.) In fact, Carroll was friends with lots of little girls. There’s nothing to suggest that he was interested in them sexually, though, which is the interesting part. He just thought they were beautiful and liked to entertain and photograph them.

Alice used to buy sweets at this little shop across from Christ Church. When the stories that Carroll wrote for her were being published, Tenniel (who did the memorable illustrations) used it as the model for the sheep’s shop in “Through the Looking Glass.” (You can read more about this here.) Inside it’s crammed with Alice memorabilia. I bought an annotated copy of both books, which is where I got a lot of this information.

Here’s the brochure from the shop. I always pick this crap up when I visit places, so I might as well scan it in for you people here. Kind of a virtual scrapbook, if you will.

I also bought this photograph, which I like a lot. It seems really sweet at first, until you notice the cat leering at her from the tree. Then it gets all crazy and dream-like. I need to frame it.

Here’s Amy and Ian walking on the grounds of Christ Church, where both Carroll and the Liddells lived. We didn’t see any students (they were all on holiday), but we did see a large group of Japanese tourists and a couple making out in the bushes. So that was interesting.

This is the front of Christ Church. Rather imposing, isn’t it? We opted to head for the river rather than hanging around any longer…

We eventually made it to Folly Bridge on the Thames and rented a rowboat. (We figured that would be more stable than punting, which involves pushing the boat with a big pole while standing on the stern.) Amy and Ian had wanted a motorboat, but Snookums and I insisted on the “real deal”. How silly we were. Only Snookums had experience rowing, though, so he got to go first.

Oh look! Some swans with their babies. (They were big cygnets, almost full-size but still with the dark downy feathers.) Snookums tries to look while simultaneously rowing to keep us from hitting them.

We were getting tired of avoiding the barges and motorboats and professional rowers in the middle of the river, so we ducked into this nice little inlet. Except it wasn’t nice, it was all swampy and gross and we had to turn around because it was a dead end. And turning around in a rowboat is really, really hard.

Amy’s turn to row. I think the look on her face and the position of the oars says it all.

Ian took over from Amy, but he too struggled to keep us from hitting the bank. In our defense, there wasn’t anything to push your feet against so it was more awkward than normal rowing. You had to avoid smacking your legs and try not to splash everybody with the paddles and maintain and straight line and… it was really difficult.

Amy’s enjoying the riding part though. It was pretty nice, when we weren’t hitting the overhanging trees.

Okay, I wasn’t as good as Snookums, but I wasn’t too bad. But this is the only picture you’re getting.

As it was getting a bit late, Snookums piloted us the rest of the way back to the bridge. We were happy to say we’d accomplished the one goal of our trip, which was to do the traditional “mucking around the Thames on a leaky little boat” thing.

To celebrate being back on dry land, we headed for the nearest pub. Here’s Ian and Amy planning out the rest of their day.

Snookums is still basking in the glow of his manly rowing skills.

Here we try not to look stupid as Amy takes a picture of us. We fail.

Since the younger kids (ha) wanted to see the Art Museum while Snookums and I wanted to see Oxford Castle, we split up. Unfortunately for me and the Snook, Oxford Castle is pretty much in ruins and closed to the public. We walked all the way around it but this was the only decent picture I got of the standing tower.

I believe this was in front of the “Bodleian Library”, which was a very cool round building. There were all these giant scary stone heads decorating the outer perimeter. I felt like they were looking at me.

Here’s one of the colleges. It’s weird for me, because my school had lots of grass and quads everywhere. But here, the lawns are actually located inside the colleges. It makes it hard to tell them apart.

Abruptly, that’s the end of the first day. Well, not really. We met up as this crazy Cajun place called “Old Orleans” where we imbibed many cocktails and ate a huge meal. (Ian got the “Swamp & Turf”, which was a steak and alligator!) Then Ian headed home to London while the other two and I went back to the B&B for some shut-eye. Fast forward to the next morning…

… Where Amy and Snookums wait for me to finishing getting ready. We had a huge English breakfast down in the dining room before checking out and heading back into Oxford. Our first stop was the “Oxford Story”, where we sat in these weird desks that got dragged “back through history” past animatronic scenes from Oxford’s past. It ruled. And at least it got us out of the rain.

I was all about seeing the famous “dreaming spires” from up high, so we headed to the tower of St. Michael’s Church. Here’s a nice view…

There was actually a fire raging somewhere in the town below while we were up there. You can just see the fire engines in this picture. The smoke is off the picture to the right.

She thinks she looks “bushy-headed”, but I think she looks cute.

Here’s the view down Cornmarket Street, which (I think) was supposed to be a pedestrian zone, except that they were doing a lot of construction on it.

Snookums eyes the horizon.

Could we look more different? I assure you, we are in fact sisters though.

How cute are we? Answer: so cute. I don’t have many good pictures of us, but I like this one.

Anyway, the rain was still coming down and we’d seen just about everything we cared to see, so we hopped on the bus back to London and were home eating Papa John’s by 4:00. And that’s it for Oxford!