A Day At Hogwarts (Or, Uh, Oxford)

Let me let you guys in on a little secret: I really like Harry Potter. (WHOA, I know, right? Revolutionary stuff right here.) Last week I talked about some Harry Potter adventures in Edinburgh, and I should probably mention that Harry is going to be a pretty strong theme on Travel Tuesday these next few weeks. Because Harry Potter travels are the best travels, let's be real!

A handful of days before my 21st birthday, Amanda, Jen and I hopped on a bus from London to Oxford, England. (This was before the three of us Eurotripped together, so this was a fun training run!) We were almost entirely unprepared for this little day trip. Which stop were we supposed to get off at? Where did we have to go once we got off the bus? All things we probably should've looked into but didn't. But thankfully we ended up in the right place, and got to experience traveling without an agenda for the first time. We walked around Christ Church College (one of the filming locations for the Harry Potter movies, and the inspiration for some of the sets) for a while, and then just sort of meandered around town... and got rained on in the process. I decided to leave out the photo of me using a plastic grocery bag as a makeshift hood, but you can use your imagination. :P

Oxford is like a movie set, or stepping straight into the pages of a book. It's just so cute, and the university is absolutely beautiful. We walked through a market, went to the Alice in Wonderland store, popped into a few bookstores, a game shop and a candy shop, and ate fish and chips at C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's old haunt. It was a perfectly wonderful, perfectly English day!

Yes, just a casual day walking around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Where's my wand?