Oxford

I spent Wednesday in Oxford with my roommate Liz. We had tried to go there a few weeks before but we never did. Yesterday was our last chance to go. Oxford is only an hour train ride out of London so we thought that we would just spend a few hours around lunchtime in the town. When we got there, we walked around the city center for a little while and ended up at the Eagle and Child Pub. That pub is a famous meeting place of the Inklings who were a group of writers that taught or lived around Oxford. C. S Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and J.R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, were members of the group. Liz is a huge fan of C.S. Lewis so she had been begging to go to Oxford just to see the pub. We also are fans of the Harry Potter series which is filmed largely in the colleges Oxford so we wanted to go see those places as well.

While we were at the pub, Liz and I sampled some of the local ales and beers on tap and sat in the booth were the Inklings would usually sit. We met an older couple who live in Boston who are also huge C.S. Lewis fans and Liz got to talking to them about the books. A while later, they came back and told us that they had an private tour scheduled of C.S. Lewis's house and asked if we would like to come as well. Liz and I had looked up possibly seeing his house when we were researching Oxford and found out that it is closed to the public (and also 3 miles outside the city of Oxford) so we obviously assumed that we wouldn't be able to see it.

We took the couple up on their offer and met them a few hours later outside his house. It was really easy to get to. We just had to take a bus for a little while and it dropped us a block from his street. It was a beautiful quaint little home that was built in the 1920s I believe. Just outside the house is a nature preserve named after Lewis (it was on his original property) so Liz and I explored that until it was time for the tour.

The tour was great and I learned a lot about Lewis. I am planning on reading more of his books this summer. We got to see all of the rooms and hear the history that went on in each one. Lewis was a devout Christian and all of his books have a spiritual message so the house is owned by a Christian organization. Liz and I ended up spending over 2 hours at the tour.

In Oxford, we also walked around some of the colleges but didn't go in any. We visited the beautiful Christ Church where the great hall and hospital scenes of Harry Potter are filmed. We also visited the Bodlein Library where the library from Hogwarts is located. I also got to see the bridge that Jay Gatsby mentions in the Great Gatsby (at least I think I found the right one).

Oxford was beautiful and I can see why so many people are drawn to it. We only planned to spend a few hours in the town but after the tour, we didn't get back to London until 8pm. It was a great day.