Oxford Day 1 - Wondering and Wandering in the UK - Alexander McGill

    The day started off very interesting. Unbeknownst to us, there was a time change in the UK last night, and we lost an hour of sleep! That explained why everyone was especially tired this morning, but we powered through it and got to the train station. At the train station we met a nice British fellow from Nottingham who joined us on the train ride and chatted with members of the group the whole train ride. We talked about the cultural differences between the UK and the US, citing things like our massive highways being the equivalent to the British rail service. At the end of the train ride, as we were exiting, the doors closed and the group was almost split in half, but luckily we got it open and managed to all stay together. We caught a connecting train, and finally, after 3 hours of traveling, we made it to Oxford. 

    Once we were settled at the hotel, we set out to the city where we first went to this very interesting place called "Thirsty Meeples”, where they had a variety of different games and food. We stayed there for around 2 hours and played games like The Sheriff of Nottingham and Ticket to Ride. After that we set off to the streets of Oxford to find a place for dinner. 

While walking, we stopped to look at places on the street like old churches and buildings. We talked about how crazy it is to have places like this in a city, and that after only being in the UK for around a week, we’ve almost grown accustomed to the thousand-year-old churches and castles littered around the city. It’s great to just stop and marvel about how old the building that you're looking at is, and the history behind it. 

After wandering and exploring a bit, we found a burger place for dinner. After that we returned to the hotel and turned in for the night, ready for a day in Oxford tomorrow. Today was a travel day, so we didn’t have much time to have activities and explore the city, but I still think that we made the most of the time and had a really great day. We already have a pretty good sense of the city, and it seems similar to Cambridge, which is the group's favorite city so far (for the most part), so we’re all super excited for tomorrow's activities. 

Overall, a good day, where we met some super nice people from the UK to chat with and got to do some exploring in Oxford.