I made a good choice when I decided on Oxford when choosing an English city to visit. I love history and Oxford is filled with it. Stories about “old boys” (as the grads are called). Buildings that are hundreds of years old. Not just the “colleges” (the various entities that make up the university) but churches, houses, cemeteries … the majority of buildings in the center city it seems are very, very old. The university buildings (some dating back to the 13^th century) are the show pieces, of course. Huge buildings made of the golden stone of the nearby Cotswolds and decorated with sculpture, the colleges are the place where students live, dine and study. In a “college town” we would expect shops, bars, restaurants and they are here in vast numbers. But Oxford isn’t just about history – it’s about the future too. There are some very striking new buildings as well as the old. I titled the picture above “Three Centuries” because it shows an old building in the background, a 20th century British phone booth (now nearly obsolete) and 21st century bikes which are found by the thousands all over town.

This church named for St. Giles was built in the 1200s and is still serving its parish today.

I was intrigued by this lane, leading to a very old building and surrounded by two others.

I wandered for hours but didn’t take very many pictures.  The weather was cloudy most of the day and there were crowds of tourists surrounding everything I wanted to “shoot” – or so it seemed. I’m posting a few and hoping for good ones tomorrow.

This painting of St. Catherine by Vittore Crivelli, painted in the 1490s, is beautifully done.

I stopped briefly at the Ashmolean Museum. I particularly like the painting shown above.

Tonight I had dinner in a pizza & pasta restaurant called (what else?) Mama Mia’s. Lots of young families there.  A dozen 11-year-old boys were celebrating a birthday. I was there when the cake made its appearance and they all sang: “Hoppy berthday to yew, Ollie!” That’s how it sounded to my American ears anyway. We had a British friend who liked to tell us that England and the U.S. were two countries separated by a common language. It sometimes seems that way!

Libbie