Our first several days here, I was slacking on the photo-taking. I'd been an incessant photo-snapping tourist for three weeks and I needed break. Plus, I figured, this is our new home and I will be here for quite a while (relatively speaking), and thus I felt less compelled to snap photos. However, yesterday was an exceptionally beautiful, warm day and we spent most of it gallavanting around town on foot with camera in tow. I haven't found the perfect bicycle yet, and I may just have to wait until I come back from Kenya, but Nathan did break down and purchase one for himself. (Understandably, as fairly soon he will be riding it everywhere.) Everyone here commutes by bike, and it is impossible to really survive here for long without one. In the meanwhile, we've been walking wherever we need to go, and it usually amounts to 6-7 miles or more per day. We're avoiding the buses, because they're totally confusing and the service is rather poor. Plus, it's beautiful out lately and the best way to really get to know a city is on foot.
We haven't taken many photos of the "Dreaming Spires" that make Oxford so famous, because frankly they are a dime a dozen here. We've been saving our photo-snapping for more unusual sites, and those brief moments when the light comes out to play.
Yesterday we made a great find: an old graveyard in the St. Cross-Holywell Church by Linacre College. It was an old graveyard, and many of the headstones were so old that they were completely illegible. The stones became legible once they reached death dates in the 1700s.
What was particular intriguing about this graveyard is that several parts of it were obviously completely covered up with several feet of ivy (for perhaps many decades) that had only been cleared recently, and several parts of it had yet to be cleared. Many of the headstones were covered and tangled up with at least three feet of ivy above their tops. We're not sure why, but some of the headstones had been incredibly well-preserved (perhaps by the ivy?), and some headstones with death dates from the 1860s looked not to be more than 10 years old but apparently were.
Nathan insisted on doing a photo shoot in the graveyard, but the light was a bit unpredictable:
We spent at least an hour wandering around in this magical graveyard. We definitely intend to go back. Fortunately we both have the same morbid interest in the beauty that is old cemeteries, and Oxford is chock full of them. I was hoping that someone in Oxford would be offering tours of all the old Oxford graveyards, but a google search hasn't pulled up anything of that sort.
On our way home, we stopped for Happy Hour at a place called Kazbar, which is a pretty famous little spot in Oxford. They serve tapas and interesting foofy drinks from around the world. I took my revenge by turning the camera on Nathan (unfortunately the light wasn't great and they turned out grainy, but the expression on Nathan's face is still worth seeing):
Today Nathan is finishing up some administrative financial aid paperwork for his program, and we're going to apply for a British bank account (which is a difficult feat, as I understand it). Tomorrow we're off on a daytrip to London. Saturday Nathan's father, Norman, arrives for a 10-day visit. So far we've got trips tentatively planned to Bath and Stonehenge. In the meanwhile I'm enjoying the slower pace we've established and our little ventures around town.
2 comments:
Oooh, exciting! Looks like one of those places where anything is possible.
It's wonderful hearing all about your settling in. It sounds like you are enjoying yourself, and are living in a great area. We can't wait to come and visit. The cats were really cranky the first few days after you left, but them seem to be mostly over being abandoned again.
-karen
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