A visitor comes to call: Part 1

The 5th Week of Hilary Term (Feb. 16-22) was by far the best in Oxford thus far.....as you can tell from the photos a most welcome visitor from the University of Guelph came to call during her reading week. It was a wonderful mid-term adventure and the perfect opportunity to do all the tourist-type exploring that I had previously passed over knowing that Melina would be arriving for a visit this semester.

Arriving on Valentine's Day, I picked Melina up from the airport in London and we travelled back to Oxford in style on the vastly superior UK bus service (compared to the Greyhound service back home). The first night in town we dined at the famous 'Eagle & Child' pub where authors J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame) and C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) were regular patrons during their time studying in Oxford.

Lovely early-spring weather accompanied Melina's arrival in Oxford and we took advantage of many (but brief) sunny moments to walk about the many sights around town during the day when I wasn't in class. The Botanical Gardens were lovely, as were the many College sites that we popped into pretending to be resident students.

Twice we visited the Museum of Natural History to see the amazing collection of zoology specimens and various displays about natual history, evolution of life, geological history, etc... Melina took some excellent photos of the many dinosaur skeletons arranged in the hall, the museum building itself was amazing and definitely worth the price of admission (free! as are most museums in the UK). Satisfying not only our interest in science, one evening during the week while I was doing a not-to-be-missed rowing workout (see my next post for more about rowing), Melina took advantage of an art class that was taking place at a local studio in town and produced a number of drawings that she took home on the plane back to Canada.

Other highlights of the week in Oxford included attending 'high tea' with another visiting friend, May from Toronto whom I attended the UN climate meeting in Bali with in 2007, as well as attending a student concert (I use the term 'student' loosely as it might as well have been a professional show) in the Christchurch Cathedral (the smallest in the UK) featuring a class mate of mine who is a virtuoso on the guitar, some future opera stars, and a young piano maestro extraordinaire.

Eating was definitely a highlight of our visit...check out the 'minty peas' on top of my beef pie and mash (potatoes). This is at a little restaurant in the covered market in Oxford called the 'Pie-minister'....I love it. I'm not sure Melina enjoyed it as much ~ but it is traditional English fare that couldn't be missed.




As you can see we got up to a lot, more activities then will fit this update actually, so I will split this post into 2 parts, to be continued......