Oxford ... Like the City, Not the Circus ...

Look at me! I'm really on a roll!

So, my new friend Courtney and I have decided that we're more than BFFN's. We're definately London Besties and we're both pretty stoked about that. Cool factors about Courtney are, aside from her wild and crazy personality that reminds me way too much of myself, are that she had 2 cool chick roomates (well, so I hear ... I've met one, Tracey, and she's pretty rad!) which means by making one friend, I upped my friend count by three. Fabulous! Other cool factor? She lives in Camden. Within walking distance of earlier mentioned favourite dingy nightclubs. AMAZING.

I know I've griped about being poor, but here's the deal. We get paid the week after we work. So I didn't work this week, no paycheck next week. Even if I work every day next week, I don't get paid until the next Friday AFTER that. So, we've gotta be careful and stretch our bucks if ya know whattimean!

But Courtney and I are bored. Uh oh. We talk about it and we decide that we're in need of an adventure but it needs to be cheap. We're a bit bored of the London scene since it's impossible to get anywhere because of the snow so we decide to skip town. Equally dangerous because sometimes you can't get back due to snow, but meh ... We decided to chance it.

We get up early, throw us a text, and decide that, yes indeed, we are heading to Oxford. Not to be confused with Oxford Circus in London, we are heading to the town of Oxford, located about an hour outside of London. Now, I'm not gonna be pretentious and copy and paste a bunch of crap about Oxford in here. If you wanna know more, go cruise Wikipedia. Like I said, I'm not teaching much this week. Haha.

But, obviously Oxford is pretty notoriously known for Oxford University, and some of history's smartest/enter adjective of choice/etc people have walked the city's streets. I've made tentative plans for Oxford with many people but I've never actually made it there. THANK GOD we went!

I was able to get a round trip ticket for less than 15 pounds, which was stellar. Courtney and I being so well organized showed up in the station basically exactly as our train was pulling away from the platform. We didn't fret, found another train leaving in less than 20 minutes, and grabbed a coffee from Costa. Within minutes we were hustling down the platform and hopping onto our train.

We had the pleasure of stopping in two towns on the way ... Slough (Rhymes with brow) and Reading ... pronounced Redding. Crazy Brits. Gotta love 'em. We took pics from the train so we could pretend like we'd been there. We had a blast chatting and drinking our coffees on the train and discovered we had way too much in common to be normal. We're probably going to be mortal enemies in another life.

We pulled into Oxford after only a couple minor delays due to snow, and we were EXCITED! We had decided to do a walking tour because we wanted someone to talk to us about the sights while we got some exercise, and it was cheaper than the bus tour. But, Oxford had other plans for us and decided to snow/sleet the second we exited the train station. Awesome. We went to an information booth that talked us into taking the bus tour but gave us a pretty rad deal on the tickets and totally made it worth it. To save money, Courtney and I had packed lunches and snacks which was a fab idea!

Oxford is BEAUTIFUL! BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL! I totally recommend checking out this city to anyone who comes to England and has the chance to get out of London. There were tons of things to see and do, so much to take photos of and we weren't bored at all throughout the day! (I took about 250 pictures. I'm aware that I have a problem) We didn't go INTO any of the attractions, it was enough for us, on our first trip there, to just wander around them and check them out. Next time, I'd definately like to spend more time in the Castle among other things. We ditched the bus tour, grabbed a map, and headed out on our own by mid afternoon and we did just fine ... we found our way and people were so nice! If they saw us looking at a map they would just stop and ask if we needed help and one nice man started telling us historical tidbits about Oxford that were so funny and interesting!

Once it got dark we realized our boots had soaked right thru from slushy snow and we were FROZEN. We headed back to the train station and got there just in time to watch our train pull away. Again. Damn, we're good! So, we hung in the train station freeeeeeeeeeeeezing and happily jumped our train to warm up on the way home. Except that our train was about as warm as the Columbia Icefields and our teeth chattered all the way home. YES!

We had made plans to meet up with my other new friend, Maria, from Ireland in Camden tonight but we were cold and damp and tired. NOT happening. So, we've made plans for all us chicks to get together and have hangsies at Courtney's place in Camden TOMORROW night. Yay! Definately pumped about the improvement in my social life here ... And I can't wait to get a paycheck again so we can actually ENJOY it! Haha.

Thanks for reading guys! Hope everyone's as happy as I am right now! Missin' everyone back home! xoxo Megs