Tripping in the UK [Part II]
Bet you thought I forgot about this…
So, the morning after the family picnic, English, PW, and I got up incredibly early — like so early people in the States probably hadn’t gone to bed yet. Our plan was to catch an extremely early train out of Woking to London Victoria Station where were would meet up with our tour for the day: Bards & Battles!
As you can see, at 6:00am on a Sunday morning, Woking’s train station is pretty dead.
However, somewhere between Woking and Victoria Station, we were joined by a very rowdy crew of World Cup revellers who’d been up early preparing for that day’s England game which was still some 8 hours away and they were already 3 sheets to the wind. Still they were quite spirited in their singing and I still can here them echoing in my mind…
There Were Ten German Bombers In The Air,
There Were Ten German Bombers In The Air,
There Were Ten German Bombers, Ten German Bombers,
Ten German Bombers In The Air.And The RAF From England Shot One Down.
And The RAF From England Shot One Down.
And The RAF From England,
The RAF From England,
The RAF From England Shot One Down.There Were Nine German Bombers In The Air…
They never did get down past four. They just kept restarting. The other song just involved repeating “En-ga-land!” over and over again.
Oh, and this one below is for Mom and SQ. 
Ironically, the whole time I was in the UK, they were the only ones who wore anything indicating “US” or US-related places. I had purposely designed my wardrobe that way after reading an article about how you should try not to draw attention to your nationality as an American while in other countries. Everywhere we went, however, they both seemed to wear US-tainted clothes.
OK, so back to the tour. 
While I will recommend Astral Tours (we did another of their tours too) to anyone looking for a good tour company in the UK, I cannot recommend whoever that tour guide was who drove the bus on our tour. Unfortunately, I don’t recall his name. Just beware of the tall skinny guy who appears to not want to be there.
Anyway, here are a few interesting facts I learned while in Oxford:
- Christopher Wren, Tolkein, and C. S. Lewis all went to Oxford University.
- The owl who plays Hedwig has his own limo.
- It used to be that you applied to three colleges in Oxford and if one of them picked you, you got in to Oxford, but now, you have one chance and one chance only. You apply to one college.
- Colleges are not specific to specialties. For example in each college, there might be 10 English majors, 5 engineers, 12 math majors, 6 political majors, etc. Whereas over here in the states, our colleges within our universities are specialty-specific.
- Did I mention that the owl in Harry Potter has his own limo?
- Their semmesters are extremely short compared to ours, which leaves a lot of time open for filming of movies, which apparently happens quite often.
- Apparently, also you can rent rooms in the colleges during non-semmester months for vacation.
Anyway, I’m trying out Andy’s Slideshow plugin for my Oxford pictures and it took me so long to figure out that I’m too tired to write up the rest of the day. ;) So, you’ll have to wait to find out about the Cotswolds and Shakespeare’s birthplace and how many steps there are in Warwick Castle…
Enjoy the slideshow…
Tags: UK, Woking, London, Victoria Station, World Cup, astral tours, Oxford, Harry Potter, Christopher Wren
