The End of Hilary Term

I spent the latter half of Hilary Term (the second term at Oxford) eagerly planning and awaiting a visit from a college friend. In the spare time between my having to write essays and complete assignments, I was starring places in google maps, searching for connections on trainline, and studying the histories of the places we would visit. I did, however, have time to do other things as well. For example, my housemates and I visited the Pitt Rivers Museum, a major anthropological and archaeological museum in Oxford. The collection was interesting enough, but the lack of any logical geographic or temporal categorisation nearly drove me up the wall.

My friend arrived on the Sunday of March 13th when I was still studying for my last exam of the term. I completed the exam on the morning of the following day, after which my friend, two of my housemates, and I made a visit to the Natural History Museum. Two pieces of trivia stand out about the Natural History Museum at Oxford: it was the site of the famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate, and it houses the world’s only surviving remains of dodo soft tissue. The dodo, which is no longer on display but of which there is a replica, famously inspired the one in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Following our visit to the museum, we went down to the Radcliffe Camera to do some sightseeing and bought a few things at the Covered Market. My friend and I had dinner at Christ Church that evening, with one of my course mates there kindly offering to treat us (students from other colleges must be invited to the scenic dining hall by a member of Christ Church to be let in). Since the term had officially ended, there were only six people in the dining hall, excluding the fellows at high table, which means we were outnumbered by the people in the paintings lining the walls.        

Mammal skeletons at the Natural History Museum
Many of the columns have intricate designs
Small mo'ai
A massive totem pole
Easter eggs from Central and Eastern Europe
The second floor at the Pitt Rivers
The view of the Pitt Rivers from the back
Daffodils at Wolfson College
A kiwi at the Natural History Museum
Beautifully coloured serpentine
An orca skeleton
More skeletons of cetaceans
A stone frog (detail of a larger statue)
The head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex
This is not a fossil! Manganese dendrites on micritic limestone
The view from the first floor of the Natural History Museum
More of the same
All Souls College
The Radcliffe Camera
More of All Souls
The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland at the Covered Market
The Church of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga on Woodstock Road

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