London Week 7 - Oxford and the Tube

Another early morning on the weekend as we got ourselves up to head to Paddington Station where we were meeting with Robin and Mary to get the train out to Oxford. We arrived in a very chilly Oxford around 9am, which was before anything opened so we were able to have a look around and a cup of tea before things started getting busy. We hadn't done much study about what to do in Oxford so after a visit to the tourist centre we decided to book ourselves in for a 2 hour walking tour of the city and colleges. Little did we know what we were in for. We got to have a look around several of the colleges and had many of the main highlights of Oxford shown to us. If there was something to know about Oxford, this guy knew it. It was certainly interesting but we were pretty historied out by the time the tour came to an end. Certainly made the old wooden building at Victoria Law School look like nothing special.

After that we decided to take in another Oxford attraction, that being punting on the canal. You could punt yourself or get taken around by a professional punter. After seeing the people trying to punt themselves and worrying about falling into the canal we decided to go the safe route and get driven around. Punting was nice and relaxing and a good chance to just sit back and enjoy. On a hot day it would be great to just pull up and eat a picnic on the side of the canal. When we go to Cambridge we might just try to drive ourselves...

Time was getting on and we decided to head off for lunch. The tour guide had recommended the Turf Tavern for a good feed, not only that it was the oldest pub in Oxford so a good tourist attraction. We had ourselves a nice pint of ale, the girls indulged in a Village Idiot with White Horses for the boys. Unfortunately by the time we got there they were out of any decent food so we had to head down to one of the chain pubs in the main street to satisfy our appetites. After all of that there was time for a quick walk, via the Lewis Carroll shop and back on the train to London.

We kept a low profile during the week, but Saturday we received an invitation to go to a Tube Station Party with Tree. Luckily it wasn't a party at a tube station. Rather the idea was that everyone went along dressed in tube station theme. We spent the day walking via our favourite named suburb Elephant and Castle (it isn't actually very nice) to Old Kent Road. This was not only a chance to get some Monopoly fix but also to head to the Toys R Us and sort out our costumes for the night.

All equipped we headed off to Tree's in Hammersmith and then off to Queen's Park along with Tree and her flatmates for the party. Upon our arrival at the party we donned our costumes and were ready to go. If you have been reading carefully you will have worked out that we decided to go as our favourite Tube Station.....Elephant and Castle. Jess was the Elephant cause Elephants are more exciting. You need to check out the photos to get the full effect though. Tree and her flatmates were dressed as the three blind mice...cause there are lots of mice at the tube station. Some of the costumes included Queen's Park, Bank, White City as well as the always present Maintenance on the Underground Line. It was a good chance to get creative. We had a really great night. It was good meeting a whole bunch of new people and seeing a different part of London. We even learnt the story of how Elephant and Castle got its name. We won't recount the whole story hear, particularly as searching the internet seems to suggest there could be multiple stories, but it was certainly fun at the time.

http://picasaweb.google.com/JessicaLMcMillan/LondonWeek7#