Oxford

Saturday we went to Oxford.  We took the Oxford Tube, which is a bus that happens to leave right in front of our hotel (there are trains, which are faster, but not when you have to take the tube for 20 minutes to the train station).  We had scheduled a private tour of the town, which was well worth it.  Our guide was a sort of free-lance academic (if that concept makes sense) in archeology.   He had a university ID, which got us into places we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.   We visited several colleges, part of the Bodleian library, and looked over a few ancient pubs and other "relics" of Oxford.  We got to see dining rooms, chapels and courtyards. I can't remember which college is which, I'll just show you a few photos with only partial identification

I think that above is the back side of Baliol College

I forget the name of the building, but I took the picture primarily to show that there was sunshine that day (as well as intermittent rain)

I forget which college, but that hallway is one of the oldest building parts in Oxford

This is the dining room at King's College, which was also used as the dining room at Hogwarts for the Harry Potter movies.  

William Gladstone, one of Jay's ancestors, was once a proctor at Kings.

The back courtyard of Kings College

A pre-Raphaelite window at King's College

The tour was well worth the time and money.  The company we used was footprints tours, and our excellent guide was Mark.

After leaving the tour, we went to the Eagle and Child (apparently known locally as the "Fowl and Foetus"), which is the pub where Tolkien and C. S. Lewis regularly met (they and a few others were known as the 'Inklings') to meet another physicist/engineer whom Jay had interacted with at conferences over the years.  His wife joined us, and we had lunch while the two guys caught up on science and we told them about our travels.  After that we got a custom tour of Worcester, his college, including the newly restored dining room (gorgeous window, but it didn't come out in a picture) and then we had coffee in the fellows commons room.  Term is not in session, so we were the only ones there.  All in all we spent about three hours with them. 

We took the Oxford Tube back, and had a simple supper at the hotel.