Day 11: Still in Oxford

This morning took us to St Mary’s Cathedral for a look around (can’t come to an English town without checking out the local olde church(es)). This included a climb up the 127 steps to the top of the tower. Plenty of tight squeezes up the spiral stone staircase, and also around the narrow balconies at the top – very similar to the kinds we experienced at the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. Some more wanderings took us past various olde buildings, colleges, libraries, as you would expect.

Lunch we had at a place called “Eat As Much As You Like” – or EAMAYL (presumably pronounce “e-mail”) – and we did just as the name suggested we should. It was just a self-serve Asian-food place with all the stuff you would expect to see... boiled rice, fried rice, various noodles, various meats and vegetables in various sauces, soups, spring rolls, prawn toast, hot chips... errr, what?

Yes, it appears that the English believe chips go with everything. Certainly I disagree on this occasion – I tried out a few chips, just to see how they went down. It didn’t work... the chips just tasted weird in that dish...

Mr and Mrs Berian (aka Berian and Julia) arrived in the afternoon, and with their lack of enthusiasm for going boating on the canals we instead had a quiet afternoon eating and drinking at various places. Drinks at a little cafe in an Oxford back-street, dinner at “Pizza Express”, supper at a pub.

We were supposed to again be meeting Tim this evening – same place as yesterday. The four of us showed up around 15 minutes after the scheduled meeting time, on the assumption that Tim would be late. 25 minutes after that, having seen no sign of Tim (or anyone else who was there to meet him) we left.

This was when we went to supper. Fortunately we chose the correct pub to do this, since shortly afterwards, a bunch of recognisable faces came past us, who pointed us towards where the ‘party’ was happening, and all was well.

Drinks and discussions were had, and upon returning to the Hostel we found that Tim’s sister and her boyfriend and housemate – all of whom we had just been hanging out with at the pub – were staying in the same room as us.

All in all, a day lacking in real excitement, but I’ve no doubt this is the proverbial calm before the equally proverbial storm. Tomorrow is wedding day – the day after that, the much talked-about cricket match.

BIO!!

(That’s “BRING IT ON!” for those not in the know)