Oxford second time around !

After the quiet tranquility of the canals, off we went to return to the chaos of Oxford with all its bicycles, students and buses!  And for one reason only - to stay at The Bath Place Hotel which is right next to The Turf Tavern!  We fell in love with both places when we were in Oxford for May Day and decided it was worth a stop on our way to Bath after canal boating for a week.

The Bath Place Hotel is a conglomeration of cottages from the 1600's all higgledy piggledy together down an alleyway with a tiny courtyard in the front.  They were originally weavers' cottages built up against the city wall.  The history of the buildings can be read in the history portion of the hotel's website and is worth the read.

(http://www.bathplace.co.uk/history_of_bath_place.html   or just google it if that doesn't work.)

In the eighties, before it was purchased and made into a hotel by the present owner, Richard Burton and Liz Taylor rendezvoused in the pink cottage portion that is now the hotel lounge and I spent a wonderful hour in there by myself before bedtime reading the paper, enjoying a shot of Bailey's and feeling like Miss Rich Bitch!


The quaintness of the hotel is part of its charm.  So are these stairs from our room and while attempting to go down while carrying a suitcase I felt a bit like I was taking my life into my own hands - or feet, in this case.  My size 7s didn't even fit on each riser and I had to go sideways down each step.  Fun, though.

We discovered the hotel when we found the Turf Tavern on May Day.  During that trip, we had dinner in The Old Tom, another wonderful Oxford pub, and struck up a conversation with a group of young men at the table next to us as we always seem to do.   They told us that if we love old pubs, which we must have told them we do, we must find the Turf which is hidden down several alleys and unless you know it's there, you aren't going to find it.  We were in Oxford the next morning at 6AM  for the May Day celebrations and since the streets were still packed with students at 7, we decided the Turf would probably be open.  So we went to find it and it was! And still packed with revelers.  The entrance we found to The Turf is off the tiny courtyard of the Bath Place and upon spotting the hotel, we decided we had to explore so in we went.  We knew then that we just had to have the experience of eating and drinking at The Turf and going off to bed in the Bath Place.  Two rooms were available for May 17th and so were we, so plans were made!  This picture is from our room down into the inner courtyard of the Turf.  Fortunately, the pub closes at 11 and we didn't mind the hurgledy gurgling burble of conversation below our window.

Unfortunately, Bill's cold was pretty bad by this time and he and Ginger spent more time in the Bath than was ever planned sleeping off his cold.  So John and I were on our own that afternoon and the next day to explore the parts of Oxford we had missed a couple of weeks before.   First we took in the Sheldonian Theatre, an octagonal building built in the 1600's and designed by Christopher Wrenn, the architect of St. Paul's and hundreds of other projects.  The main room is absolutely dramatic, a circular arena decorated in marble and gild and the auditorium where each Oxford student matriculates and graduates.  The ceiling was an allegorical marvel which we unfortunately did not photograph but once again,you can google it and get a pretty good picture.  Google "Sheldonian theater ceiling" as I did to get a picture of it. 
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Up more stairs we went into the cupola of the Sheldonian to get a panoramic view of the Oxford rooftops - rooftops being an understatement for sure!  What a sight.

And on our way up to the cupola, we also got to see the ingenious way Wrenn designed the building.  The room was to be round with a 70 foot span without columnar support and since there were no beams available that long and strong enough, it had to be done ingeniously which is what Wrenn did so well anyway.  Wikipedia has a great explanation of the theater's construction that is worth visiting. 

It was now time for the walking tour with Stuart, the tour guide, which you can catch across Broad Street from the Information Center several times a day.  It was pretty good because he took you into several colleges that you wouldn't have been able to enter and you could see the beautiful gardens and courtyards frequently closed to the public.  We took Stuart's last tour for the day and I would suggest an earlier one when he might have a fresher attitude toward his participants and his job than toward finishing his day.  The interiors of the colleges are magnificent and New College, which is ironically the oldest, is one of the prettiest and the setting for several Harry Potter scenes.

The next morning after a leisurely and generous continental breakfast at The Bath Place,  we toured Blackwell's Book store while Ginger and Bill went to the doctor's!  Blackwell's  has the largest room of books in Britain and Bill heard that it has "3000 miles of book shelves".   Getting John out of a bookstore is like getting him out of the hardware store but I think it was so overwhelming and our time so limited that he gave up before he got hooked.  Ginger and Bill are with us here in London (May 22nd) as I write this and Ginger said she was on the 4th floor in used books on our first visit to Oxford and Bill said he could have stayed there the whole day.  If you are a book lover like we all are, visit Blackwell's with trepidation for fear you may lose an entire day of your holiday or many hours in there.  But then, what are vacations for if not for doing what you want when you want and not having to judge the value of your activities!

Off to Bath - and American friends - that's pronounced Bahth!  Like bah, bah, black sheep......