My Travel Adventures

We spent the last two days of my friend’s visit in and around Oxford, as we had another mutual friend and his boyfriend fly in from the States. As soon as they arrived early in the afternoon, I took them on a tour of the most picturesque colleges in Oxford, but because I did not have enough time to do my research, I had to make up fake histories and interesting facts about them.

Our last proper day trip during my friend’s visit took us to the Midlands. My friend and I took an early train to Leamington Spa to meet my housemate Harry (who, for the purposes of this blog, chose the epithet “Harry the caper-denier” over much more flattering ones, like “Harry the Tall” and “Harry the rugged-chested”). Harry the caper-denier, so-called because he refuses to believe that capers are anything but olive raisins, picked us up in his car and drove us to the half-an-hour-distant Stratford-upon-Avon.

Having taken my friend to London twice, I found that there were still a few important places we had not seen. Thus, I set aside this Tuesday morning for a speed tour of the city, making sure my friend could get back to Oxford in time for his online meetings. We took a six AM train, which was the cheapest option until half past nine, and arrived at Paddington after seven.

Since my friend only took one week off from work, we had to plan around his US work hours during the second week of his visit. Thus, on Monday, I made sure that our excursion to Windsor would not bring us home any later than five o’clock in the afternoon. The itineraries for subsequent days were even more tight.

We arrived in London late in the morning and headed straight for the British Museum. In preparation for the visit, I made myself a short list of iconic things I really wanted to see: the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, the Hoa Hakananai’a Moai, the Benin Bronzes, the double-headed Aztec serpent, the Sutton Hoo Helmet, and of course an obligatory mummy. We managed to see all of them, taking a short break for lunch and returning once more because of the museum’s sheer vastness.

We reached Dover shortly after sunset on Friday and ate momos at a very nice Nepalese restaurant. Our hotel was also very cosy, which more than made up for the fact that my friend and I had to share a bed. He reminisced about the coffee they served in the morning for many days.

The more logistically complex journey I planned for my friend’s stay took us to Kent. We took the Oxford Tube to London on Friday morning, evading the exorbitant railway prices but getting delayed by bad traffic. We got off at Marble Arch and walked through Hyde Park towards Wellington Arch, where I told my friend about the bizarre history of the Wellington statue that once adorned (or, according to some, defaced) it. It was so big that instead of facing the street that ran through the arch, the statue had to be placed perpendicularly to it.