Hogwarts, Narnia, and Middle Earth

We awoke relatively early Wednesday morning; we had agreed that we wanted as much time as possible to explore Oxford before our guided tour at 1:30.  Besides, we had to return our room keys by 10.  After cramming our luggage in a cabinet in Magdalen College's lobby, we set out to find breakfast at a little cafe we remembered seeing the night before.  It turned out that the Grand Cafe was in fact the site of England's first coffee house!  Needless to say, I became rather excited about this, and proceeded to exclaim over the quality of the coffee and the decor and pretty much everything else about the cafe.

The first coffee house in England!

Delicious breakfast over, we went our separate ways.  I browsed an antique shop right next to the Grand Cafe, where I found jewelry, clothes, trinkets - and books.  Old books from England that end up in used bookstores in the US tend to be pricey, so I was eager to find less well-traveled volumes.  I also found a more modern bookstore in which I purchased a biography of C.S. Lewis and a book about the "Inklings" (as Lewis, Tolkien, and their similarly intellectual friends christened their little group).  Wandering up and down High Street and in and out of shops and churches took up most of the morning before I went back to the Grand Cafe for lunch.  This time I took out my notebook to take notes on the atmosphere of the place, thinking it would make a good setting for a story, but I think I made the waitress nervous with my observing and scribbling.

I met up with everyone else back at Magdalen College, where we now shoved our shopping bags into the cabinet with our luggage.  Bhav and Adam joined us for a biking tour of Oxford, but three of us who can't ride bikes took a walking version of the tour instead.  The guide was quite knowledgeable about funny little stories behind various buildings, but I was more impressed by her ability to navigate the cobblestone streets in heels!  I don't have the time, memory, or inclination to rewrite everything we learned, but here are some of the highlights: the most hidden (and yet famous) tavern in Oxford; the Bodleian Library; the towers that inspired Tolkien to write about the Two Towers; several Harry Potter filming locations, including the bouncing ferret scene with Malfoy and Mad-Eye Moody; the garden where Alice Liddell became friends with Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll); and the pubs where the Inklings spent their time.

Above: the Bridge of Sighs
Left: the Divinity School

 My favorite part, however, was St. Mary's Passage, the alley leading from High Street to Radcliffe Square between the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and another building.  In this passage stood a door with a fierce, lionlike face carved into it and two golden fauns holding up the lintel.  Not far away, in the middle of the walkway, not at all where you would expect it, was a solitary lamp post.  Here, just outside the church where he delivered his "Weight of Glory" sermon in 1942, were the things that inspired C.S. Lewis to write Aslan and other aspects of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  It gave me chills.

 

After our tour concluded, we went back to Magdalen College to wait for the rest of the group.  And wait.  And wait.  Finally Adam drove up, the others spilled out of the minibus, we all grabbed our luggage, and we angered several drivers by dashing across the street to meet Adam where he had pulled the bus over.  Despite these efforts at speed, traffic and construction stretched our drive out over nearly four hours (according to Carson - I wasn't keeping track).  But we had a play to get to in Nottingham!

Allie and Lauren were waiting for us outside Nottingham Playhouse when we drove up.  The usher let us stash all our overnight bags behind the bar before we slipped in the back, only about twenty minutes late.  The play, "The Full Monty," may be familiar to some of you, but I'll summarize: six out of work men decide, for various reasons, to become strippers for a one-night-only show in which they will go one step further than the Chippendale's dancers, i.e. "the full Monty."  The best part was watching how the lone guy in our group reacted with every sexual innuendo and pelvic thrust (sorry, Carson).

Lauren had called a restaurant at intermission to make reservations for after the play, so we all went out for Indian food and dissected the play, our visit to Oxford, and the inevitability of a group music video starring Carson.  When we finally returned to our flat around 1 a.m., we agreed that going away made us realize how much this place has come to feel like home.