Travelogue - Oxford

I bring you now to the place where my heart soars and my feet traverse the same streets and frequent the same pubs as my favourite authors and writers from centuries past. If I had a second home, it would be here. If I picture my dreamiest imaginative, intellectual, mysterious, ancient, learning settings, they are here. 

Oxford, England.

Oxford is a one hour train ride north west from London Paddington Station. Arriving by train into Oxford Station is easy. If you don't have luggage, it is a mile walk into the centre of the city. Usually (almost always), I have luggage, so a quick taxi to the college where we will be staying saves energy for all the Oxford explorations to come. But there have been many times I have pulled that luggage into the city centre.

I will be there again soon, it is a place I always feel a deep draw to, so this is just a preview, from my trip there last year. It is a most frequent visited place for me. In fact, I have been going to Oxford now almost every year (I believe I missed 2 times somewhere in there) for the last 11 years. It is the place I spend most of my time when I travel to the UK. And that is on purpose, of course. There are many reasons why Oxford draws me so keenly. You can search for Oxford here on my blog, and there will be countless posts for you to explore on that subject. It would take a while to read them all, so why write another one?

When you love a place, you find that the more you explore it, the more there is to discover. While I can name all the streets in central Oxford, and tell you about all the colleges, I always learn more when I go each year. While I can tell you some very interesting tales about the Bodleian Library, I have only been inside three times, and there is so much more to learn. There are so many more lectures to go to, authors to meet, books to discover, evensong and orchestra concerts to attend. You get the idea. I suppose this is the same way I view people. While I may know someone pretty well, I love to discover more about that person, going deeper.

Oxford is my place to go deeper. I do not go to be simply entertained, but to engage my intellect and challenge myself with new ideas and books to expand my horizons and see through other's eyes, from ancient to modern days. It is the ideal mixture.