Day 6, Thursday - Oxford to Amsterdam

I finally got to sleep-in this morning, until 9am. Which reminds me that I have a few updates which I forgot to include in my post yesterday. The first is that I almost slept in yesterday which would have caused me to miss the morning crew outing, but fortunately I woke up with about three minutes to get dressed before my ride was supposed to pick me up. Actually, I had a few more minutes than that, due to the fact that Oxford is five minutes behind GMT, so since my clock was set to London time (which is GMT), I actually had eight minutes. 

I also forgot to include this photograph:

This is the pub where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis use to meet for a club they called “The Inklings” and read to each other pieces from whatever they were working on at the time. If you know me, you know that I love both of those authors. 

  

Me on the tour bus with headphones for the audio guide

Now on to Thursday. I went on an open-air bus tour around mid-day to see a bit more of the town. It is difficult to take pictures on a moving bus when something is gone before you can turn on your camera, but here are a few: 

Saaid Business School

Christ Church College (fun fact: the dining hall and other parts of the Hogwarts school in the Harry Potter movies were designed based of parts of this college)

Town Hall

Here is also a bit of video (sorry about it being sideways, I will try to fix that):

 After the tour, I did a bit of shopping and then returned to Rachel’s to pack. I left Oxford on the 3:01 (or 15:01, since everything in Europe runs on the 24-hr clock) train to London Paddington Station and after an underground trip and the Eurostar, I am currently typing aboard the Thalys train from Brussels to Amsterdam. However, since they don’t have free internet for the Class 2 coaches, I will post this when I get back to Uncle Mark et al’s house. 

Side note: in case you ever want to take the trains between Amsterdam and London, I highly recommend Thalys and Eurostar as they are quite quick, but from my experience, the Eurostar has been right on time while the Thalys has been late (about 30min each time). I haven’t had any problems because of it, but just something to keep in mind. 

Cheers!