Our first castle

The next morning we left Oxford for Shakespeare Country-- Stratford-upon-avon in Warwickshire. But on the way we felt the lure of the Warwickshire castles, and we ended up stopping at Kenilworth Castle.

It might have been nice to have a little more time to see Stratford-upon-avon and the Shakespeare sights. But I still don't feel bad at all that we went

to Kenilworth because the castle was just beautiful and we loved roaming around the towers and seeing England's history come to life.

Here's a photograph of a footpath we followed around the castle on our way back to our car.

England's Beginnings: Oxford

This trip was motivated and made possible by Scott's conference at the University of Oxford. Or, more correctly, Magdalen College, which is one of the many colleges that comprises University of Oxford. Here's a photograph of Scott at beautiful Magdalen College (above), and here are some more photographs he took of the college (below).

Here's a photograph of Scott punting with some fellow conference go-ers.

I arrived in London on the 21st of August in the morning and was planning to pick up a car at the Heathrow Airport, drive to Oxford, and meet Scott at 1:00 pm at the front of Magdalen College. Does anyone see a problem with this plan? Perhaps if I tell you that I've never driven a car on the left side of the road (or driven on huge roundabouts with several lanes and exits, or know anything about English freeways) and remind you that I was alone... It was a crazy thing to do, but after a traumatizing four hours (three hours longer than it should have been) I finally arrived.

I accomplished this amazing feat on nothing but a "light continental breakfast" served at 7:00 or 8:00 am on the plane. So, after finding my husband, my first priority was eating, after which we could only had enough time for one place. We chose to climb the many many stairs of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Here's what we saw at the top:

The Bodleian Library

and the town of Oxford.