Woke up
this morning just before my alarm, but decided to take a little more time
to nap. Got my lazy ass out of bed at about 10:00am and shaved my face
and head which took about 30 minutes. Afterwards, I walked the streets
of Ox, first over to Brasenose College. It was when I was in the quad and
going to take a picture of a sundial that I realized I left my smartcard
in my floppy disk, d'oh! Brasenose is a very nice college. My tour of the
college was self guided and I just happened to arrive just moments before
two large organized tour groups, poor bastards. The hall was very nice
with the bronze nose (brazen-nose) mounted on a wall. The chapel was also
very nice, with stained glass and a pipe organ.
After leaving Brasenose I wandered
around Ox trying to find the Turf bar. After wandering around Radcliff
square and reading the posted tourist information about a dozen times,
I finally figured out where the Turf is located. The Turf bar is a fucking
difficult place to locate the first time. One of the entrances is near
the Sighs bridge. The passage winds around a few corners and, BAM! You're
there. I also tried to find Haley's house, which should have been fairly
close to the Turf, but I couldn't locate the "blue" plaque that marks the
spot.
I wandered around a bit more and
finally ended up paying a £1 for a tour of Trinity College. This
time I had my camera and smartcard. The quad was very nice, with ducks
and trees. The chapel was incredible with stained glass, pipe organ and
wall paintings on the ceiling! I spent about half an hour in the chapel
taking pictures and attempting to perfect my photography techniques. Though
I think the camera is very nice, the view finder and the photo results
are still a little bit off, cutting the top edge I believe.
I wandered back to St. Mary's in
the afternoon, they had listed a brief sermon starting at 6:00pm, so I
decided to attend. I really wanted to hear the pipe organ in action.
During
the sermon they sang, read aloud from the bible and a few psalms. They
also played the pipe organ. It had a rich sound easily filling the naive.
The sermon was brief, about 40 minutes. During the sermon many people came
in off the streets just to wander around, it was all very interesting. I wonder if the regulars find it annoying or ignore the entire circus.
I made my way out of the church immediately after the service and headed
over to my favorite internet cafe on the High Street. I spent an hour checking
e-mail, there wasn't anything new, and writing down information from my
links section of my website. I'm likely going to head out to London on
Wednesday to check out some of the free museums and other attractions. I'm hoping to head over to the Oxford natural history museum on Tuesday,
should be cool. Anyway, it was pretty funny to watch the Swiss play a Doom
derivative. They were yelling back and forth about how they had killed
each other, it was all rather amusing.
Now I'm back here at the hostel again. Before I came back I stopped again at the French pastry shop where they
tried to over charge me the first time, but they were actually out of what
I really wanted. Then I went to get some bottled water and the same guy
attempted to give me the incorrect change. Luckily I caught it before I
left and they took care of it right away. I'll probably head back there
tomorrow if they are open. Sitting here in the hostel lounge, watching
a movie. Signing off now.