Oxford Day 2: Kicks and Giggles - Alexander McGill

 Our second and last day in Oxford was as good as I hoped. We started off the day with a tour of Oriel college. Oxford has a similar system to Cambridge with their college system. Oriel College is just one of 44 colleges in Oxford University. We were shown the main quad, the chapel, and the dining hall of Oriel. My personal favorite part of the tour was the chapel, with its impressive stained glass and organ. The college looked similar to the one we toured in Cambridge, which I thought was interesting. 

    The tour of Oriel was followed up by another tour, this time of the Bodleian Library. This was my personal favorite tour of the whole trip. The library itself was beautiful, but its contents were what really intrigued me. The books in the library were hundreds of years old, some of them being from the 1600s. Our tour guide showed us how they chained books for security reasons, and how to correctly manage the books so they don't break down over time. Our tour guide also talked about how this library was so magical that it was what the Hogwarts library was modeled off in the Harry Potter series. 

    After the Bodleian and lunch, we went to the Oxford Botanical Garden. In there we just walked around and enjoyed the nature and scenery. They also had a greenhouse that had plants like the venus fly trap, which I’ve never seen before, but always wanted to! The temperature in the greenhouse had to be regulated for the plants, so it was very warm and humid there, which gave us a nice taste of home. 

After the Botanical Garden, we went to the Oxford Museum of Natural History. They had crazy stuff in there like to scale dinosaur bones, and interactive exhibits with stuffed animals that looked incredibly realistic. The museum was mainly animal exhibits, but it also had a section with historical objects that were used hundreds if not thousands of years ago, called the Pitt Rivers Museum. There were things like old pipes, swords, and guns that all caught my attention. 

    After the museum, we went and ate dinner, and went back to the hotel to turn in for the day. We did some journaling, and talked about our creative responses we were going to do when we get back home. 

Today was filled with jokes and fun experiences. It was one of the only days where we got everywhere on time, and there wasn’t a single boring thing we saw in my opinion. I would put Oxford pretty high on my rankings of cities in the UK, and I think other people in my group would agree!