This clumsy, brilliant Life...: Oxford in 2.5 hours

Weeks ago I spent a morning in Oxford en route back to Plymouth. Aside from the camera I toted in plain view (and the rather large Harvey Nic's bag from a day spent in London), I totally looked like an Oxford student. At least that's what I told myself and, not so secretly, what I desired.

Oxford was a powerful place overrun with rocket scientists, a large quantity of old stone, canoes-a-plenty (pardon my lack of rowing vocabulary - are they called canoes?), and the occassional Robert Pattinson look-a-like.

I use the phrase "phenominally old" far too often in my description of things in Europe, but it's just plain true. I've been fortunate enough to have traveled a good bit of central Europe in my short 25 years and what amazes me more than the languages, more than the museums, more than the people, and more than the culture is simply how old the architecture is.

I remember furiously traversing Rome in an attempt to make it from one major tourist landmark to another in 48 hours, and stopping to catch my breath for the 5 seconds I allowed for such pertinent action. Inevitably, whenever I would do so, I would literally find myself standing in front of a piece of rock with a barely legible plaque stating its origin in, like, the 1st century. It would then happen all over again hours later with another random bit of ancient remains. It blew my mind.

On a different scale, Oxford seemed to have a similar effect. While not quite as old as the Colosseum, I still felt the profoundness of turning, looking straight up and seeing yet another massive turret, belonging to another massively old stone college. I did actually buy a map in the Oxford train station hoping that my few short hours would be spent efficiently touring the most famous of colleges (wikipedia claims there's 38 total), but gave up when I realized a) it was a crappy map, b) my feet hurt from 2 days in Londontown and c) I had 2.5 hours until my train to Plymouth departed. I did what any spoiled tourist would do: hailed a cab and told him to take me to Christ Church, of course, because that's where Harry Potter was filmed (duh).

Fortunately, after speeding through the brilliantly traditional sight that is Christ Church, Harry Potter dining hall included, I was able to mosey along it's perimiter and bump into a few other colleges. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned crappy map, I struggled to figure out which colleges they were exactly - especially after I stopped to photograph a "closed" college only to be shoo'd off. That one must be where the rocket science happens. Oh well. I still feel like I accomplished seeing Oxford, including a tour of its most famous college, in record breaking time.

Proceed...