Woke up
this morning at about 6:30am after waking up a few times during the night.
I was dead tired yesterday after being awake for about 30 hours. Took my
first shower this morning and now I understand Charley's suggestion concerning
a "real" cotton towel instead of a highly viscous packlite towel.
Took the opportunity this morning
to see more of Ox. Most of the streets were empty due to the early hour,
so it was a great time to take photo's without other tourists. The first
was of the Saxon tower. It wasn't open so I didn't climb to the top.
Just
down the street in Christ Church college and it's cathedral. The primary
spire that fronts St. Alldates street is large, and I was a considerable
distance from the spire so the picture will be missing some considerable
intricate detail. All the sites I photographed have considerable detail
on the face of the walls, including intricate stone work. Most of the sites
have been around for centuries as the obvious wearing of some of the stone
work is obvious. The real treat today was being able to photograph the
inside of St. Mary the Virgin church. St. Mary has some incredible stained
glass and they are monster creations and difficult to frame correctly with
my camera. St. Mary's also has a great pipe organ that is suspended above
the floor some 20 feet or so. After St. Mary I took some photos in Radcliff
square, particularly the Radcliff Camera, camera means room.
Later on I walked Broad street and
found the approximate location where Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were burnt
at the stake. Actually Latimer and Ridley were burnt together in 1555 in
the castle ditch while Cranmer was made to watch. Cranmer reversed his
prior recantation and was burnt in the square the next year, 1556.
I wandered over to the Oxford museum
and managed to get in for free since they had a sign advertising free admission
with YHA membership! Cool deal for me. They had a lot of Roman artifacts
which I spent most of my time examining. They also had some 2001 Space
Odyssey stuff on display as well. The 2001 stuff was interesting, the Roman
artifacts were more interesting.
I was pretty tired after all the
running around, and may still have been under the influence of California
time so I took a little nap. After the nap I spent a while tracking down
a grocery store. I'm uncertain if it will be open tomorrow and Monday for
the holiday. I spent about £5 on food that I hope will last me until
Tuesday, when stores will likely be back to their normal schedule.
I made my way back to the internet
cafe for another hour. Most of the time was spent getting one of the machines
to load my software so I could download pictures. Looks like they were
having some problems over at Apollo Hosting because I was unable to create
any additional directories for my new photos. Looks like they fixed the
issue right as the hour was up so I just copied my new pictures out there
and blasted out of there. Now I'm just hanging in the req. room of the
hostel and signing off.