oxford

well hellloooooo friends! its around midnight here and i feel like my brain is gonna explode. 1) i leave for Disneyland Paris tomorrow and i'm gonna die i am so freaking excited but somewhat stressed out and 2) spending the day at oxford seriously made my brain hurt. WOW. i have never felt so insufficient in my life! that place is just overflowing with smartness. it was terrible but great at the same time.
so lets get started!! we left pretty early but our coach got stuck in insane traffic. like i said before, olympics are gonna be so freaking sketchy. oh well! so it took us a little over two hours to get there i would say. we got dropped off right in the middle of the 'city' of oxford and i have to say it is beautiful!! it reminds me a lot of bath with the style of architecture as well as the material, which is kind of like this whitish yellow stone. i probably sound really unintelligent explaining it like that but i seriously have no idea what these buildings are made out of. so our first stop was the ashmolean museum, which basically houses all of oxford's cool artifacts. now you have to realize that oxford is legitly like 900 years old. you know how most schools flaunt the year they were established and stuff? oxford can't even do that because it has been lost in the 'mists of time' as professor jacoby put it. that being said, this museum was freaking legit. if you have an extra day in london i would definitely suggest taking a day trip to oxford and going here. they have the coolest stuff! the first exhibit we walked into was a ton of greek and roman sculpture. they were in awesome shape! and it was a huge collection. that stuff is super cool to me because we learn about it so much ya know? it's cool to see it in person. the next exhibit was the ancient civilizations of nubia and egypt. they have so much stuff from egypt!!! oh my gosh it's insane! i think i saw something like 7 mummies? and one of them was the full on thing with like 4 sarcophagi (plural for sarcophagus, fancy i know :)) for a priest that was a really big deal. that stuff freaks me out but it is so fascinating! i spent most of my time in that exhibit. i wish we had more time because it was a decent sized museum and i definitely didn't see everything. after that i just kind of started wandering because i realized i was running out of time. i went and saw a musical instrument exhibit that had some stradivari violins.. that was insane. made me miss playing my sweet viola! (something i will talk about later :)). they had this one stradivari that's called the 'messiah'. it was made when he was in the peak of his career, yet it was never really played, only ever owned by collectors so it's in amazing condition. it was a beautiful violin! i also went through the china display and that was amazing. i have this new obsession with china (like china as in plates.. not china the country) ever since i've been here. so that was cool. the last floor we went on was full of art. it was great!! not the louvre or anything but i saw some monet, manet (they are two different artisits, get it right!!), degas, and pissarro! don't know if that means anything to anyone but basically it was an awesome museum and i LOVE oxford.

after the ashmolean which was really great, we headed over to oxfords library. holy. freaking. crap. i can't even imagine going to a library like this anywhere in the states, let alone on my university's campus! trying to picture this at byu was a trip! it's like an ancient cathedral looking thing! it was beyond insane.. this is where i really started to feel insignificant. they have all these collections from people who have studied there like charles dickens, CS lewis, lewis carroll (author of alice in wonderland) and more! i felt like i was walking in the footsteps of legends or something. (okay that was corny i'm sorry). but it was seriously so cool. they had a neat exhibit with really old illustrations for alice in wonderland so i liked looking at that. they also had a bunch of places where they filmed harry potter! the hospital wing is attached to the library and is really beautiful, and apparently the great hall for hogwarts was modeled after oxfords great hall. i didn't go see that stuff because you had to pay and i had other stuff i wanted to see. but it was cool to be around ya know?

after the library we had free time. a lot of people went off to shop or find harry potter spots.. but me, chelsea and taylor went to the history of science museum. in my opinion, this was a must see. it was so cool. they have tons and tons and tons of old astronomy tools, medical stuff, maps, compasses, microscopes.. it was insane. it was like an antique collectors paradise, except this stuff was actually significant. i can't even put into words how cool it was. it was so well preserved, they had an insane amount of everything, and mostly it was crazy how intricate and beautiful everything was! seriously i don't even know how to describe it so if you want to know more, google it or something!

 after that we headed over to the oxford shop! they have shops all over the place that carry oxford apparel but this one was the real deal. its like going to the byu bookstore instead of a walmart that has byu stuff. i got a real oxford sweatshirt! it's sweet! i'm taking it to disneyland :) then we just roamed the streets and chelsea got some ice cream. tesco carries ben and jerries and she got a whole tub of phish food. hahaha. but oxford has some sweet shops and i would definitely recommend it!!

this is weird to me- they have krispy kreme stores here and carry them in tesco! so they have this flavor which is a traditional english dessert.. it's so good!

sadly it was time to leave oxford! our next stop was just outside town, it was called blenheim palace. not a very english name right? it's not! it's actually named after a battle in germany. the duke that owned the place was the victor in that battle so they named it after him. it had so much history it was so cool!! the duke that got it is actually the great great great something grandfather of winston churchill! so he was born there in the late 1800s and they have a huge exhibit on him that we saw. i have to say i think i have a new favorite english person! winston churchill was a stud! not only was he a boss in world war 2, did you know he also won the nobel prize for literature? he also loved to paint and many people bought his christmas cards! he was a talented horseman and also turned down the dukedom so that he could run for the house of commons. cool right? it was sweet to learn about him.
other than churchill, the house is AMAZING. you can't take pictures inside, so you'll have to take my word for it. it's like a mini versailles, with tons of rococo baroque design. it's the most posh 'stately home' i have ever been in. it easily trumps the ones i've seen in england before this. only to be trumped by versailles itself. it made me appreciate my history of architecture and interior design class once again! to see the style and recognize it makes you appreciate it so much more. they had real chippendale chairs and all sorts of stuff. it was literally overflowing with priceless things. including stuff they actually were given from versailles. so yeah i'm sure you're getting my point here. it's mini versailles in england and it's beautiful. and freaking huge. also, like the other really nice houses we have visited here, there is a wing that is closed from the public because the spencer-churchill family still lives there. is that crazy or what?! also.. the spencer part of the name is indeed the same spencer that princess diana came from! fun fact right? so yes winston churchill and princess di are distantly related.

after walking around the gardens for about 45 minutes it was time to get back on the coach for london! i  was out cold on the way home, i was so dang tired. instead of being dropped off at the centre, we were dropped off in the middle of town to go to a concert at temple church. this was a cool opportunity because typically it's not open to the public. it's part of the church of the knights of templar, which are really secretive. i think they are similar to the freemasons if that helps you guys to understand. i can't really remember their history but i'm pretty sure it's one of those groups in the da vinci code or something. the concert was awesome. so much better than the symphony at st. pauls. hahaha. they played three different pieces and it was altogether about 2 hours long. but this time instead of a full orchestra it was a quintet! two violins, a cello, viola, and a bass clarinet. it was so pretty. i love quartets and trios and quintets or whatever because i can actually relate to it. it reminds me of my quartet days! it made me miss it so much! i might have to whip out my viola when i come home. never thought i'd hear myself say that! oh i forgot! for dinner we had to go find stuff on our own and we found MEXICAN! it was definitely not super authentic but everyone was saying it was exactly like chipotle. i have never been so i wouldn't know but it was pretty freaking tasty so i was a happy camper. yayayayayay mexican food!

after the concert we came home and now everyone is up packing. I can't believe i'm going to DISNEYLAND tomorrow! ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i am gonna get like three hours of sleep tonight but get ready for the best blog post ever tomorrow! hopefully i have internet! i love you all so much and hope everything is going good!

special edition 50 pents coin for the olympics!