Our guide told us about how Oxford is made up of different schools based on the program of study, and some are harder to get accepted into than others. She also told us about the way their courses are conducted, with a lot of instruction being with a course tutor one-on-one.
The campus itself is beautiful with a lot of green areas and huge historic buildings. I loved their library building which was shaped like a circle!
After walking past the library and several different school buildings, we went to Christ's Church Cathedral, which is Oxford's on-campus church.
We were given free time to look through the cathedral at our own pace and I loved that it was filled with beautiful stained glass windows. I thought it was pretty impressive for being on a university's campus.
After the rest of our tour of the University of Oxford, we were given free time to eat lunch and explore the rest of the city. Our guide told us about a food and shopping market that would be a good place to get lunch, so we decided to go there. After eating some delicious paninis, we saw a milkshake place that had every flavor you could ever imagine.
They had milkshakes that were different flavored candies, chocolates, cookies, and even cakes! The most interesting milkshake flavors definitely had to be Cadbury Creme Egg, Jelly Beans, Apple Pie, Tic Tacs, and Special K. I chose to get Nutella flavored because I have a Nutella obsession and it was delicious!
We then went around looking in the shops searching for some classic Oxford Apparel. Everyone in our program must have had the same idea because we all ended up in the College Store which seemed to have the least touristy and most authentic clothing. We ended up getting an Oxford University T-shirt in their school colors of blue and white.
We then explored some of the areas around the campus a little more. One of the gardens, Cathedral Garden, is where Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson, who we know as Lewis Carroll, got his inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. At that time Carroll was a mathematics student at Oxford's Christ Church College where he befriended Alice Liddell. She was one of the Christ Church Dean's daughters and became the inspiration behind Carroll's stories. Like almost all the grass on the University Campuses you can not actually step on it. Most of the quads are kept in pristine shape (greenest and most groomed lawns I've ever seen) and kept watch over by porters. So we looked at the garden through the gate. It was really cool to imagine it being Wonderland. There were flowers and a large tree that looked like the tree in which Alice tumbles into the rabbit hole.
Next, we gathered together after lunch and went inside Christ Church College for a look at the Great Hall, which was where JK Rowling got her inspiration for the dining hall in Harry Potter. Needless to say there were flocks of Harry Potter fans eager to see the dining hall so we shuffled into the crowd and were guided into line to enter the Great Hall.
There were a lot of similarities to the dining hall in the movie. It had the large window in the back, portraits of influential people hung everywhere, long wooden tables with candles and tin table settings, high arched cathedral ceilings, and a long horizontal table at the end of the room. We snapped a few photos quickly since we were hurried through the line so other people would be able to see the Great Hall.
We then headed to New College, where a scene from Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire was filmed. We went to the south cloisters were the other wizards walked around wearing the Potter Stinks badges in the movie.
In the corner of the south cloisters quad there is also the large oak tree in which Mad-Eye Moody turns Malfoy into a ferret.
After that we took our last looks of the city while we walked back to the bus. We had a lot of fun acting like Oxford students for the day. We were sad that the day was over, since it would be our last trip around England, but we were glad it ended with such a nice one!
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