Writing about our childfree jaunt to see “Stranger Things” reminded me that I haven’t yet blogged about our last childfree jaunt – a couple of rainy days in Oxford over half term. It was two weeks ago so I can’t remember all of the details but hopefully I’ve got the highlights.
We were staying at Voco – Oxford Spires, which was lovely. There was free access to the pool and spa (jacuzzi, sauna and steam room) and the breakfast buffet was extensive. They even had rollmops, which I haven’t seen since living with my Polish friend Rob while at uni. I have not missed them.
Weirdly, we did not go for the pickled fish for breakfast but the fruit, pastries and cooked breakfast were all good.
Plus the hotel had pictures of dogs everywhere:
We were within walking distance of the city centre and there was a route from the back of the hotel along the river but it looked a little…soggy. After the recent storms, it seemed that the Thames River Walk might involve actually walking in the river.
There was a lot of this. What we thought was a lake turned out to be playing fields. It was the rugby posts that gave it away:
The centre of the city was less waterlogged although we did have to cross a river to get there:
And then we wandered around Christchurch a bit:
One of the first things we like to do when we go somewhere new is climb up a tower and look at the views. I don’t know why we do this because I don’t like heights and Eva reallly doesn’t like heights nowadays but we’ve done this in Copenhagen, Alanya and Calais. So Oxford’s version was the Carfax Tower:
And here’s the view from the top:
It wasn’t a huge climb but it was tricky as the spiral stairs were very tight and with little headroom. If Reuben had been there, he would have banged his head multiple times for sure:
Luckily we didn’t get any head injuries but I did get my bag stuck in those railings a few times.
Talking of Reuben, although he wasn’t there it felt like he had a prescence in Oxford:
While we were in that corner of town, we decided to pop into the Natural History Museum to use the loos and also see some impressive dinos:
There was a lot of taxidermy that visitors were encouraged to touch, which I haven’t seen in the London version of this museum. I’m not sure how I felt about stroking the bear who did indeed look very floofy but also very dead.
I’m not sure how Eva would feel about this fox either – I’m sure she would find it adorable but I don’t know whether she’d want to pet it:
The all-male statues who looked on at the half term hubbub seemed quite appalled at it all:
But really, what do they know?
On the way back through the city centre we found the most ancient branch of Pret I’ve ever visited:
Being from Winchester, I’m not easily impressed by historical stuff but Oxford did have a lot of nice quirky old buildings hanging around the place:
In the evening, we went out for a romantic Valentines meal at Nandos, seizing the opportunity to aggressively promote chicken-eating while Eva wasn’t looking:
The first night we were there, we’d been too tired from travelling to do much but we did grab a tasty stonebaked pizza at the White House on the same road as the hotel:
There was a very highbrow pub quiz going on but we didn’t get involved because we didn’t want to commit to staying awake once we’d finished our pizzas. That’s middle age right there.
On Valentines Day though, we had a big night planned. Not just Nandos but also a showing of a Rogers and Hammerstein concert at the Odeon. When I say that *we* planned it, I mean that I did. Nathan put up with it.
It was fun! Being a cinema there was no singing along but you can’t argue with a couple of hours listening to songs from “The King and I”, “South Pacific” and – of course – “The Sound of Music”. I naturally had a few nitpicks around timings for some of the SoM songs but overall, it was very well done. At the end, the cast took their bows to an instrumental version of “Oklahoma” and so naturally that’s been stuck in my head ever since. Which made it very gratifying when that exact bit (“you know we belong to the land”) popped up in the Stranger Things show.
And that was almost it for our Oxford adventure. The next day we had the hotel room until 1pm but Nathan had to work so I spent the time doing more swimming, jacuzzing and lounging around as well as nipping back into town on the bus for another Pret coffee and some spicy chicken from Kokoro. We’d had a massive breakfast so I wasn’t really hungry enough for spicy chicken but it just looked sooooo good. We could have happily spent another couple of days wandering around and checking out the other museums but it was a pretty good use of a couple of days’ annual leave. We didn’t get as far as we did last February half term – the aforementioned Copenhagen and also Malmo – but we didn’t come back with Covid this time either. Win win!
