There are many whimsical gargoyles on buildings in Oxford.
I slept pretty well at the hostel despite the close proxemity to the trains and the paint fumes from the remodeling. We got out of the hostel around our usual time of 9:00a and walked to high street. We had lucked into a parking space right in the front of the hostel and decided to chance leaving the car there during the day.
Oxford is definitely one of those cities that you don't want to take a car into. There are thousands of bicycles and it appears that the bicycle is the most efficient means of transportation.
We wondered around the city centre until 11:00a, the start of our walking tour. The official City Guides (blue badges) tours are definitely worth the price and Chelsea and agreed that it would be best to catch a tour when we first get into a city/town.
The tour was led by a very knowledgeable lady that made the tour very enjoyable. Oxford is the city, Oxford University is the collection of 39 colleges, some that date back to the 1300s. My most enjoyable was Exeter - college of notables such as Michael Palin (Monty Python fame).
After the tour we retrieved the car back at the hostel and headed out of town towards Nottingham. We had decided to drop the car off in Nottingham on Saturday morning as it is a short train ride to Grantham and Harlaxton Manor, where we had to retrieve Chelsea's luggage.
The drive to Nottingham took us a bit longer than planned as the Friday traffic was heavy on the motorways, plus it rained off and on pretty much the whole way to Nottingham.
Another navigation challenge awaited us in Nottingham as we had the hostel address, but not a detailed enough map. We stopped at one of the "welcome breaks" on the M1 hoping for free wi-fi to get some directions in Nottingham, but we had to pay 6 GBP for 90 minutes of wi-fi time. We used all the time catching up on email, the news of my company's re-organization plan. My job is safe for the time being, but my current team is being broken up over 3 different managers and I don't currently know who I will be reporting to.
We did make it to the hostel (The Earl Howe) and this was by far the worst of our accomdations. It looked like a pub that had it's heyday in the 70's and the rooms hadn't had the decor updated much since. However, the owner is by far the friendlist of any of our hosts we had! Peter is from Australia with a young son in Denmark so he lives in England. Chelsea and I decided not to venture out for dinner so we ended up chatting with Peter and his girlfriend over some pints of Guinness and Strongbow.
3 pints of Guinness made a very filling supper and I slept soundly that night. I was startled to wake up during the night though thinking that the room was a blaze as the electric heater emitted an orange glow that was very bright!
Tomorrow we turn the car back to Enterprise and head to London!
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