Headed Home

Okay. That British rain we've heard so much about has started, so time to go home!

We are packed and ready to start our day of travel – a combination of public transportation that has become quite familiar: walk the half block to the corner and take the X3 Oxford bus to the “rail station”, board the First Great Western express train to Paddington Station where we will take the Heathrow Express to Terminal 3. This leg of the trip will be on Air Canada through Calgary – hopefully the Canadian Mounties will not be waiting for Jim at the gate (reference to Jim’s speeding ticket in Vancouver years ago).

So in preparation for a day of sitting, we spent the last two days just relaxing here in Oxford. One of the things that we learned from the two weeks in Portugal last year, and reinforced with these two weeks in Oxford, is that what we most enjoy is getting the feel of what it is like to live somewhere different. And staying in a house makes it much more real than being in a hotel – even down to figuring out how to operate appliances,

live without a dryer (you can see Jim doing it the old fashioned, environmentally correct way), navigate a grocery store, sort recyclables in a whole new way, etc. Granted, a lot easier here due to everything being in English.

We have been out on the bikes again – and getting much more adept at zipping down the left side of the street and going around the many city buses and tour buses (that are very bike-friendly and seem to watch out for us). We had one moment of panic when we locked up our bikes to eat lunch and when we returned we could not get them unlocked (they were chained together and then around a railing). During what seemed like an eternity of each taking a stab at it, I was thinking of the email I would need to write to our homeowners: “Dear Simon and Lesley: Thank you so much for the use of the bikes. We were very careful to lock them up, but then could not unlock them. You will find them safely secured at the corner of…” We finally figured out that we needed to push before turning. So we were back on the bikes for a nice ride via the bike path along the Thames.

Our Oxford time gave us time to explore several of the fabulous, and free museums. These included the Museum of Natural Sciences (including archeological equipment of Lawrence of Arabia, a blackboard of formula’s written by Einstein when he gave a lecture here, and creations of Marconi, just to name a few) and the Sheldonian Theatre (1669) where the painted ceiling depicts the triumph of religion, art and science over envy, hatred and malice (that theme again). We also entered the bizarre world of The Pitts River Museum (the “back room” of the University Museum). The front portion is a museum of natural history and includes a stuffed dodo bird (extinct since the 17^th century) immortalized in Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll was a mathematics lecturer here at Oxford).

The Pitts River portion is hard to describe so I did take a few photos. It is a massive ethnographic (archeological and anthropological) collection with over 500,000 items from all over the world and from all different eras. The museum's collection is arranged thematically, according to how the objects were used, rather than according to their age or origin. Everything is displayed in old Victorian style cases, with either handwritten or typed (on a very old typewriter) descriptions. Felt a bit like being in a flea market or antique store.

Here is one example of a thematic display - "Gambling Games"

And for those of us play therapists, it is the dream sand tray figurine collection

The building itself was remarkable, with each column created from limestone from a different part of the world. Out in front was an installation “Ghost Forest” by Angela Palmer – consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which she brought over from a commercially logged rainforest in Ghana, Western Africa.

The logistics of doing that seems impossible. And we grumbled about how hard it was to move the couch out of the window of 289 Marina Blvd…

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Ashmolean Museum – it is touted as “one of the best museums in Britain outside of London” so hopefully that will satisfy those of you that our muttering about our failure to see the Tate or British Museum.

Here is where had our question answered about the metal detectors in the fields that we had viewed on our train ride to London. Looking for coins – there are “hoards” of coins that have been excavated in the area – from Roman coins to early British – so basically during times of war, people would put there coins in a jar and bury them, hoping to come back later to retrieve them. Other items of interest included the Alfred Jewel (a gold enameled ring, over 1,000 years old, said to be the inspiration for Tolkein’s Trilogy’s ring – Tolkein taught at Oxford and is buried here), Egyptian mummies, and the “Messiah Stradivarius” violin just to name a few. It was five floors of exhibits but small enough where we could see everything.

A bit of shopping in Oxford, and dinner at “home”, we toasted another great vacation. As we gathered up our things and put their house back in order (we have heard from them that they left our house on Wednesday and were headed to Yosemite and then Los Angeles) I found myself drawn to the laptop and browsing through www.sabbaticalhomes.com just to look at possible options for the future. This was an experiment in home exchange and we think it went quite well (we did not receive any emails from neighbors indicating problems on the homefront). We stayed in touch with the family throughout the trip and it was fun to hear what they were doing, which suggestions they had taken regarding places to go and things to do and they seemed equally as interested to hear our adventures.

We have an ocean and continent to cross and, to quote Robert Frost (who has an honorary degree from Oxford) "miles to go before we sleep," so off we go to begin our journey home.

Hope to see you all soon! (and if you haven't read Jim's "Loo" post yet, be sure to go to "previous" posts)

Jim and Lisa – in our Oxford Home