Back to Oxford!

There were good things in Oxford, but being there as a tourist, there was a feeling of not being allowed to go places because you weren't a student. Really, we looked like students so we probably totally could have, but I'm nervous about that stuff. We were kind of unlucky because it was a time when a lot of colleges weren't letting tourists in because of exams and some kind of special day. This is a random Great Hall, not the Harry Potter one but another one, right after an exam. Imagine doing exams in robes and stuff. It's another time.

And this is the lawn of the college Tolkien was in, which we only go to go into because we paid an official walking tour guide. They were setting up for whatever the day was.

I was a little disappointed with the guide because he waffled on a lot about how Oxford is becoming a modern liberal university, and so many women apply, and so many women get in, and people come from all over the world. He was very knowledgable, but I live 2 blocks away from a modern liberal multicultural university, so I don't care about the number of women at Oxford, Oxford is where people invented magical worlds and wrote books about them. Someone asked where this pub was and the guide gave directions. It's where CS Lewis and Tolkien hung out.

The Bodleian had a free exhibit on Romantic literature of the middle ages. Legends of knights and so on. Lots of very old books. So there was no photography allowed. But we spent ages in there, reading everything and following the development of stories, right up to an original page of a LOTR manuscript hand-written and illustrated by Tolkien. Pretty special, glad we went in there.

Finally, I love how all the colleges are built around lawns. No matter what size the college, a lawn. I rather like the small colleges in particular.