Who Gives a **** About an Oxford Comma?

I hope you were humming the Vampire Weekend song along with the title.  (Sidenote: an "Oxford comma" is a comma placed before the final conjunction in a series of three or more items, as in: I enjoyed the tea, crumpets, and cakes.) The things those academic types think up.

the steepest

During our short stay in Oxford we felt surrounded by the stories of countless famous and familiar authors that drew inspiration from this place including: William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Phillip Pullman.  Whabbam look at that Oxford comma usage.  The city is less than a two-hour bus ride from London, and was much smaller than I expected.  In fact, we unintentionally stumbled upon the Radcliffe Camera, one of the most quintessential sites in Oxford, as we were lugging our suitcases over the cobblestones in search of our hotel.  Which, by the way, was quite a little find in itself.  We stayed in a tiny little bed and breakfast tucked into the heart of Oxford off its own little side street and apparently built in the seventeen hundreds.  Our room was up a crooked, steep  staircase at the top of the hotel that looked out over the gabled roofs. Stepping out onto a balcony from the stairs we found ourselves leaning directly over the front courtyard of a legendary and quite hidden pub that our friend Adrea had told us to look out for, The Turf Tavern.  We ate both our dinners there.

English cuisine we've sampled so far:

Scones with clotted cream - yum
Fish and chips - a classic
Steak and ale pie - perfect pub food
Scotch egg - a hardboiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and baked coated in bread crumbs
Cornish pasty - a baked savory pastry with fillings of meat and vegetables
Full English breakfast - eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms and .. baked beans..?
'Whippies' - extra creamy ice cream that tastes like it came straight from the cow

what a great mew

While aimlessly wandering through Oxford our first night we discovered a "mew," which is basically an old carriage alleyway.  Upon the discovery of our windy little Oxford mew we were so intrigued by the name that we tried to use it as often as possible.  As in, "You're in trouble. Go to the mew."

One day we took the bus to Blenheim Palace, Churchill's birthplace and one of the grandest palaces in England. It was breathtaking.  In addition to touring the state rooms, we went on a weird behind-the-scenes, perspective-of-the-servants tour on the third floor.  We were led through the strange exhibit, complete with moving mannequins, by a time traveling holographic image of one of the old servants.  Anna and I decided we are not super into these use-your-imagination exhibits that seem to be popular here.  But apart from that, the palace and grounds were beautiful.  I felt like Elizabeth Bennet gone to tour Pemberly with her aunt and uncle, plus a sister and minus the aunt, uncle and wealthy love interest. Womp womp.

We toured the colleges with a ridiculously quintessential looking old man who had attended Oxford some years ago.  Although he looked the perfect Englishman, he had an odd way of speaking - a British accent but occasionally odd grammar.  We thought possibly he was French. He turned out to be from Lebanon, which shows how much I know about accents.  Anyway, he had lots of fascinating stories to tell.  It was dreamlike seeing this place that I have read so much about, in fiction and non-fiction. Very old world.


Shoutout to Adrea Piazza for the tips on what to see and do, and cheers to Hannah Nesbat, arriving soon for a year at Oxford.