Today Susan and I explored a few of the sights in Oxford. We started by walking a shortcut from our AirBnB to the Natural History Museum. The shortcut took us along a bike/pedestrian path next to fields and over some brooks. Very pleasant. Much nicer and 50% shorter than walking along the roads, like we did last night and got lost. But we had directions from our AirBnB host today and we did much better!

The natural history museum is full of fossils, rocks, old bugs and other natural history things. Susan is keen and knows a lot about birds and animals. I am less interested, but there was an exhibit about brain development that had real human brains! So that was neat.

I’m touching a badger:

Next we tried to visit the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, but it’s closed on Mondays so we’ll go there tomorrow.

The Bodlean library was on our list of things we must see because there is a Jane Austen exhibit on right now. It explores some of her influences: books she read, people she knew, the Napoleonic war. There were copies of her books, and of books she read. There was also samples of her handwritten drafts, and her little lap desk she worked on. I enjoyed clips of adaptations of her works that have been made by the BBC.

Jane Austen’s portrait in the window, me posing for a portrait outside:

Standing in front of an Oxford landmark (edit: which Susan informs me is called The Bridge of Sighs).

It was time for lunch then, but we got distracted by the covered market. After lunch we checked out the Oxford University Press Bookstore, went shopping for snacks at M&S and walked home.

We’re still jet-lagged so the evening is for rest, colouring, and planning tomorrow.