A walk through scenic Oxford

I began my time in Oxford with a fifty minute walk from the Vines to St. Hugh's college. We walked through a very beautiful (though narrow) path and several rather awkward kissing gates, so called because if two people go through at once the second of the two will be kissed...in the face...by the gate. We made a stop at a beautiful riverside location called Parson's pleasure, where the great men of Oxford such as C.S. Lewis would traditionally strip off and go swimming. No women were allowed at this location to shield them from what Dr. Jonathan Kirkpatrick referred to as "mounds of professorial flesh". A massive hedge separated the place from the rest of the world and women punting along the river would have to get out and walk behind the hedge in order to avoid the place. My biggest question is what does it say about the parson considering the fact that it is his pleasure?

Later on, I went on a further walking tour. We came to a park with trees from all over the world. In that park I was informed that a murder had taken place there over the weekend. As an American tourist who was raised on the portion of the western canon that is British mystery tv shows, I was very excited and determined to tell my parents, which I will do here since they read this. From thence we journeyed to the Natural history museum, which boasted wrought iron gothic architecture with a glass ceiling and a dinosaur skeleton. For the record, a t-rex's arms are incredibly short.

Our next stop was Kebel college, a beautiful gothic-revival building with gorgeous red, white and black bricks built in a quadrangle. Its chapel took my breath away, something that became rather routine on the walk about town. Next, we went to two theological libraries which were honestly kind of boring... seriously guys.

We then proceeded to make our way to the Bodleian library, passing the martyr monument, a monument dedicated to several protestant bishops who were murdered by the catholics in the middle ages. The monument is often said to be the spire of an underground cathedral, apparently. The bodleian library was truly remarkable. Its numerous latin inscriptions kept my tired and jet-lagged mind engulfed for hours. Equally as intoxicating was the university church, where the trial of Thomad Cranmer was held. Cranmer recanted his protestantism, but when he was still to be executed, he recanted the recantation, and even went so far as to thrust his right hand, with which he had signed his recantation, into the fire so it would burn first. He was a staunch believer in the principle of "if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it away from you.

The Natural history museum. Such steampunk, amirite?