Oxford

I know inquiring minds want to know what Matthew and I have been up to, so wait no longer, here’s the latest news.

Yesterday, we went to the Natural History Museum of South Kensington and walked around. We have differing architectural tastes. Matthew prefers the busy Romanesque architecture of the Natural History Museum, whereas I am much more inclined to appreciate modern architecture. And since, as they say, the bloggers write the history books, I get to plead my case. Modern architecture is more honest. The material defines the building style, whereas, in classical architecture, the style is replicated in whatever building material they choose. Classical architecture takes less critical thought. Furthermore, many of the old-looking buildings in London were actually built in the late 1800’s, so even though they have stone exteriors, they have iron or steel frames. Very dishonest. But I couldn’t convince Matthew that modern architecture was worthwhile, he had very strong convictions that classical architecture is just “cooler.”

Anyways, we saw some cool things at the museum. We walked through the mammals section, and through some reptiles, just browsing, and walked past a gigantic slice of a redwood tree all the way from California, and ended up in the rock and mineral gallery, where we saw some meteorites and a cursed gemstone. There are some amazing rocks! Some of them which form as perfect cubes, or bubble outward, or shoot upward like towers. They were amazing, and here are some pictures.

Afterward, we went to St. Paul’s for the Evensong mass, which happens every evening at five. It wasn’t as cool as the first time I went, because we didn’t get to go sit in the pews near the altar, and they only had half the choir there, but it was still nice to sit underneath the dome and look around the church during the mass.

We set off to find a pub one of Matthew’s friends had recommended after St. Paul’s, and eventually walked over halfway back to Mile End along the Thames looking for it. But we found it! It’s called the Prospect of Whitby, and we were able to get some quality pub food, Matthew’s alleged favorite cultural food group. It was founded a ridiculously long time ago, in 1520, under the reign of King George VIII. There is a picture of a sign in the pub which shows how long its been around. We walked the final two miles back to Mile End after leaving the pub, and bought tickets online to visit Oxford, which we did today.

Oxford is a small college town. It has an active, young atmosphere, and all the old buildings really struck Matthew’s fancy, as he described it. University of Oxford seemed to spread all over the town, and we accidentally avoided paying another four pound admission fee to explore part of it. We found another way in, and didn’t realize we were supposed to pay until we left. What can we say, I guess we just reaped the spoils of outsmarting the prestigious University of Oxford. There were some gorgeous gardens on the campus, which we walked through for awhile. We wandered the town for the rest of the day, stopping in a pub with a bunch of drunk Oxford rugby players at one point, and eating dinner at a pub named The Three Grapes. We boarded the train to come back to London at about seven thirty and got in an hour later. We walked up Brick Lane this evening and were accosted by no less than ten men trying to sell us curry as we walked along. The first man very emotionally pained that we weren’t going to eat in his restaurant. But we finally made it up and down the Lane, and walked back to Queen Mary.