well / I haven't uploaded them yet)Broughton Castle is actually owned by the Fiennes family (yes. Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, the actors) and people still live there; we saw their dining room and living room. The castle was certainly cool. They have a moat, gardens, and you can stand on the roof! Pretty sweet... The gardens were so well-kempt, too. They certainly put most gardens to shame. Apparently Broughton Castle is used often in films, so maybe you have seen it before? One of the hallways we went down was used in Shakespeare in Love.
This castle is also home to a very steep spiral staircase, perhaps designed to frighten invaders and keep them away from the upstairs. It would have worked on me! Several important British people have come to visit (and apparently survived these stairs) and therefore the rooms they stayed in became big memorials to them. Queen Anne's portrait is in one room in memorandum of her visit.
After visiting the Castle Gift Shop we got back on the bus to go to Oxford, another two hours away. By this time it was around 1PM and we had last eaten at 8:30 that morning, so we were starving. The Brits seem generally uninterested in lunch until about 1 in the afternoon anyway, but when we finally arrived in Oxford it was 3PM. 3 PM with 17 hungry college students is not a good idea!
I didn't spend much time there, it was really more of Oxford-in-an-Hour-and-a-Half, a majority of which was spent at a restaurant. If (to quote the informational papers we recieved on the bus) "Cambridge is a city built into a school, but Oxford is a school built into a city". Oxford (or what I saw of it, at least) reminded me a lot of New York City whereas Cambridge reminds me a lot of Burlington, VT or Cambridge MA. We didn't really get to see very much; we went to a japanese noodle bar and a church and that was about it! I wish they had given us more time there to see some of Oxford University, but I did see Oxford University Press, so I guess that's better than nothing.
Yesterday my one class was cancelled because my professor was stuck in Italy, and it was beautiful day, so I ended up taking a four-hour walk around town, from the colleges to the markets to the residential areas to the Backs (The backs of the colleges - how fitting.) According to our lovely porters, we are currently in the middle of British Summer, which is much like May in New England, but with a little bit more rain. Pictures don't do this place justice; it's absolutely beautiful here and I wish you could see it for yourselves.
Coming Soon: The British Food Entry!
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