Oxford University is steeped in history, close to half of the British PMs that have held office graduated from there, even former US President Bill Clinton spent some time there too. We decided to join a walking tour of the city and the surrounding colleges. Oxford University wasn't what I expected, it wasn't one giant campus with faculties and giant grassed areas filled with students. The main part of the uni was in the city centre and it was made up of two buildings which are used for the students metriculation/convocation and also their graduation. Famously one of the buildings has been used in one of the Harry Potter movie franchise. While on the tour we visited one of the 35 colleges in Oxford and were able to go in to see their chapel and meals room. The particular college that we visited had many famous ppl, some were former kings or PMs who I didn't know by name, but one person whose name I had heard of before was Cecil Rhodes, who's name is synomous with the Rhodes Scholarship. After spending some time around the college and also hearing one of our tour group members getting in trouble for stepping because they were not a 'fellow' of the college we walked past a few more colleges before ending the tour outside some small apartments where our tour guide named dropped famous ppl who had stayed there. Overall it was a very brief tour of Oxford but something that I enjoyed and it kind of quashed all the stereotypes of the place being of high prestige and only having spoilt rich kids study there.
Another highlight of the Oxford visit was that we were able to eat a Jamie Oliver's restaurant called Jamie's Italian not ONCE but TWICE. We walked past this place on the way to the town centre and saw all this fresh pasta being made. Since it was nearing lunch time it was unaminous between the 3 of us to go back there to try out the food. When we headed in we were greeted by 3 head waiters all waiting to take us to our table. We were seated down stairs in a corner which had graffiti art all over the walls. Initially we were all set on getting pasta since they make their own pasta on site but after going through the menu and reading the specials our decision on what to eat was a lot harder. In the end we settled on getting an entree Linguine with truffles to share, a fish dish, lamb casserole and scallops. Whilst eating the food we decided that we'd be back here after the Oxford tour to eat a very early dinner before we headed back to London. On our 2nd trip back to Jamie's Italian we all ordered entree serves of pasta since it was only 3hrs after we at the first time. This time round we ordered Squid ink angel hair pasta with scallops, taglitelli(i think) with meatballs and spaghetti with prawns in a tomato based sauce. It was quite funny cos the waitress from our first visit whilst serving customers recognised us and couldn't believe we had decided to come back so quickly after our first meal, but to be honest we couldn't fault the service and the food was very tasty, decent servings and the price was pretty good too. Suffice to say that we left Oxford very full from Jamie's Italian and that bit more 'educated'.
On the Sunday morning, we made a visit out to Greenwich to go see/stand on the Meridian Line. I had this as one of my must do's, I'm not sure why but it was something I wanted to go and visit. Anyway we caught the train out to Greenwich and when we arrived we started following the signs to the town centre. I had heard that there were some markets there to have a look around and of course there were a few museums too. First place of visit was the Meridian, it took us a lil while to find the place since the 'spot' where everyone takes the usual photos is inside a museum. So we decided to head straight for the photo spot before some tour groups we had spotted earlier crowded any decent photo opportunities. After taking photos of us standing either side of the line and on the line we went back through the museum to look at some of the old clocks, telescopes and maritime instruments that they had on display. After the museum, we managed to catch up with Natasha, John and Emily. We ended up going for a short walk through the markets and then made it to the Queen's gardens(I think..) where we saw some more artwork and then headed over to the maritime museum. We headed into the main hall where there were rows and rows of tables and chairs, and on the roof was this massive painting. John mentioned that the room had been used in a scene in Notting Hill, but for some reason I remembered this room from some other movies. We wandered around Greenwich for a lil while longer and our goodbyes to Natasha, John and Emily since it was time for us to leave to head back for lunch with the other guys in Chinatown.
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