Who can resist a "sweet city with her dreaming spires"? Hey, count me in! Oxford, a university town some 50 miles from London, is England's answer to Harvard. (Never mind the fact Oxford was here centuries before Harvard ever thought of asking any kind of question, much less inspired imitators. Just who influences whom, I've found, depends on how one pronounces "zebra".)
The city of Oxford has thoughtfully shunted traffic around the edge of the city centre, leaving the inner streets an exhaust-free zone (after a few days in England, one appreciates that). Parking is plentiful, but comes at a cost: for a three hour ticket, I fed all my spare change--£4.50--into the meter. I needed to unload some of that weight, anyway--a full day of walking lay ahead of me.
Unfortunately, I'd come on a Monday, when most of the museums were closed; the rest didn't open until noon. But this didn't dampen my spirits--I'm an American, after all, and hopelessly optimistic, not to mention awfully impressed by anything 800 years old.
So instead I went shopping, at one of the usual high street stores that make their home amid those dreaming spires. After-Christmas sales are still raging all across the Isles, and I had a teenager with me.
Fortified by a trip to Debenhams, I located The Oxford Story, a sort of historical amusement park ride not far away. Here one climbs aboard a student desk, which circumnavigates through a treacherously steep timeline of diaramas, while the exciting events in Oxford's history are narrated: the St. Scholastica Day riots of 1355 (a precursor to Kent State), the burnings at stake (that bloody Queen Mary!) and King Charles I, who made Christ Church College his court-in-exile, before losing his head. (One needs an iron stomach for British history.) Since the Museum of Oxford was closed, this seemed the best way to get an overview of Oxford, but the ride is probably best enjoyed by those between the ages of 6 and 12.
Then I walked past Christ Church, the oldest and best known of the 39 colleges that comprise Oxford University. A sweet custodian in the archway told me tours were available, but I decided it was too early in the morning for full-bore academia, plus I wanted to save time for the dodo bird I'd really come to see. Down the road I popped into Alice's Shop, once frequented by Alice Liddell, who later visited Wonderland courtesy of Lewis Carroll. (He taught maths at Christ Church under his real name, Charles Dodgson.)
Since the city centre is compact, it was only a 15 minute walk in the other direction to the aptly named Broad Street. Here, a collection of bearded heads, guard the Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren when he was still too young to have a proper beard of his own.
Across the street is Blackwell's Bookshop, with four floors of books, enough to make my bibliophile's heart flutter. The American Politics section alone is larger than any I'd seen in America itself, with Michael Moore dominating shelf space. (I counted 37 copies of his latest, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?) Others promoting the same theme (Bush is an idiot) were plentiful, but Ann Coulter's face peeped out at me too. (I quickly averted my gaze, lest I be hexed.) I climbed upstairs to the British history section, where I forgot what century I was in, and it was only my growling stomach, and the smell of latte, that reminded me it was past noon, and time to visit the museums.
I went to the University Museum of Natural History, after first sighing over the Bridge of Sighs and the Radcliffe Camera (which means "chamber" in Latin, spoken freely here). I paused to wonder what lay behind door number two and admire the green green grass of St. John's College (named for St John the Baptist, the Patron Saint of Tailors. Who knew?).
Admission is free to the Museum of Natural History, but for that price don't expect any brochures or even a leaflet to guide you. The main gallery is full of menacing skeletons, but I quickly found the dodo bird I was looking for.
The dodo bird once lived happily in Mauritius, where he had no natural predators. Then the British arrived, with their dogs, guns, and avian fascination. The dodo numbers dwindled, until they became the poster child for extinction. The Brits brought back a few survivors, amusement after all being rare in the days before BBC. Fed a diet of bangors and mash, the birds soon became overweight, hence the 17th century drawings of fat, ungainly dodos. (This happens to Americans, too, when fed a diet of bangors and mash.)
The Pitt Rivers Museum is housed in an extension of the building. Here the museum itself is an exhibit, with its 19th century display cases filled with objects identified by tiny handwritten labels. Here I found an early example of a blog, written in ancient Kashmir, displayed among early communication tools.
For more information on Oxford, go here. If you'd like to be admitted to Oxford University, go here, and study hard on those A-levels. (What A-levels are exactly is a closely guarded state secret, known only to British 16 year olds and their teachers. We aim to find out, though, as soon as we've learned the local parlance well enough to actually converse with a 16 year old.)
We'll surely return to Oxford, if only to cash in our Blackwell's discount card, and to brave the waters of the Cherwell on a punt. And, unlike the rest of England, Oxford has some really sweet parking, undoubtedly what Matthew Arnold was referring to.
