My first morning in England I had porridge for breakfast at my friend’s place in Didcot, and then we headed off to Oxford by train.

We first visited the Ashmolean museum, where we looked at a lot Greek and Roman items (large statues as well as tiny, intricate jewelry), as well as some South Asian and Middle Eastern stuff.  After that we went by Blackwell’s book store, and got lunch in the cafe there.

Much of the city is the university, and the buildings are quite interesting (and old).  I don’t recall what most of them were, but here are some of the places we passed while walking around:

Some of the buildings have statuary on them:

Or in front of them:

After lunch, we made our way to the Pitt Rivers museum, an old-style museum that is full of display cases crowded together, where the items in a given case are of similar type, though they may be from different cultures.  It’s certainly organized differently from most museums one might go to.

On the way there, I saw these flowers growing out of a wall:

This is the Natural History Museum, through which one must pass to get to the Pitt Rivers:

We had time to look through most of the Pitt Rivers, but not to look through the Natural History museum, as they both were closing at 4:00.

More buildings from continued walking in the late afternoon:

Some grotesques on the side of a building:

Cobblestones:

This is apparently known as the Bridge of Sighs (not to be confused with the one in Venice):

Here’s an interesting clock:

I liked the light on the street in this picture:

We had dinner at a pub called the King’s Arms.  I had rabbit pie with mashed potatoes, which was quite a lot of food.  I had never had rabbit before, but found it pretty tasty.

Not long after dinner, we took the train back down to Didcot.  I had plans to head back up to Oxford myself the next day to see the city by water.