A Weekend of Museums Part Two

Ok, so where was I?

Right so we spent the afternoon wandering around Oxford and the Ashmolean museum. After that we headed back to the hotel to have a rest and showers. Over the past 3 ½ months we’ve stayed in a lot of different accommodation. I’ve learned that you can read all the reviews online you want, but that won’t guarantee you a completely accurate view of where you are about to sleep! The place we stayed at in Oxford wasn’t too bad, a B&B-marketed place, which was a hotel and small units down the road and around the corner. It was run by one of those couples where the woman is rather large and bossy, and the man is quite scrawny and seems hen-pecked. When we went over for our (free) breakfast in the morning, I don’t think the husband quite believed we were actually staying there, and he asked us what our room number was – I didn’t hear him ask anyone else that! Anyway, the place was ok, shared bathroom with two other rooms which isn’t too bad, except you when you need to get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night, which I always do. The bathroom had a dead bolt lock, but unfortunately it was broken, so I had to do a MacGyver and use my nail clippers to manoeuvre the lock closed. (Yeah ok, it wasn’t that hard, but I came up with the solution straight away so I was pleased with myself).

We headed out to have dinner, and since it was Saturday, a beer out in a pub afterwards. It was bloody FREEZING but that didn’t stop all the girls out in their skimpy dresses with bare legs and arms. I am definitely getting old, I was more than happy to be wearing my thermal underneath my t-shirt, along with my jacket and scarf! One thing Cam and I have noticed in our travels so far – no matter where we’ve been, people out on the booze are always the same – skimpy clothes, over-preened boys, and bad music. Definitely getting old.

The next day we got up and had a (free!) cooked breakfast before heading to – wait for it – the Pitt Rivers Museum. (All photos are at the bottom of this blog entry.) My mum had built this up so much that I was a bit nervous it was going to be disappointing. As Cam will tell you, with a roll of his eyes I’m sure, I don’t like to be late for anything. My sisters are exactly the same, and we think it stems from being late from everything as kids (I may have written about this before…?) and now we all have a pathological fear of being late. (I remember it being so bad at one point that Chloe and I told our parents that our hockey games were half an hour earlier than they were, just so we got their right on time. There were four of us kids so I imagine it was hard to get us all sorted.) Anyway, this meant that straight after brekkie we headed to the museum to be there when it opened at 10am. So we got there a few minutes before it opened J But we weren’t the only ones, there was a group of 4 American students talking (loudly) right behind us.

The museum was AMAZEBALLS. It was like what you imagine a museum should be like: (maybe I’m the only one who does this) full of dinosaur bones, lots of skeletons, stuffed creatures of all varieties, and signs that said ‘PLEASE TOUCH’. I LOVED IT. Honestly, it was so hard to stop myself running around the museum like a small child touching stuff and yelling “Look at this Cam, look at this!!” To be honest, I did do that a bit.

There were so many cool things there I’ll have to really think about what my favourite things were. Ummm….Ok.

-       The T-Rex skeleton cast – that one’s a no-brainer. I’ve seen a T-Rex skeleton before, in a museum in San Francisco, but for some reason this one was so much more imposing, and a little terrifying.

-       Actually, pretty much all the dinosaur stuff.

-       The ‘PLEASE TOUCH’ displays. There were a lot of ‘PLEASE DON’T TOUCH’ signs as well, but I loved that there were a variety of things – a stuffed cheetah and Shetland pony (?!), some ancient rocks and fossils, amazing looking minerals, amongst other things

-       The Dodo skeleton and model of dodo. I have a weird love of dodos, I have no idea where it comes from, I just love the way they look.

-       The stuffed 4 metre crocodile. It was HUGE, and they grow up to 7 metres. Imagine coming across one of them in the wild.

-       All the animal skeletons. I’m starting to sound a bit morbid, but they were fascinating.

-       The shrunken heads. You were right Mum, they were awesome.

I didn’t enjoy the display of live cockroaches so much. Or the tarantula, which was exciting to see but still gave me the heeby-jeebies. I saw a little girl start crying when she saw it, so I wasn’t the only one a little freaked out.

If you ever get the chance to go to Oxford, you should definitely head to the Pitt-Rivers Museum. It’s FREE and they only ask that you make a £2 donation per person (which you obviously don’t have to, but you should!). I may have built it up too much now, but still – GO.

After Pitt-Rivers museum, we could have done anything and it still would have been a fantastic weekend. We decided to get on the Oxford City Site-seeing bus. It was about an hour around Oxford with a lovely old guy doing the commentary as we drove around. He was full of little tidbits of information about past students of the university and various stories about them. Apparently Rowan Atkinson did a Masters in Engineering there, I had no idea (although really, why would I?). The city tour was good but it was eye-wateringly, face-freezingly cold on the open top of the double decker bus. Still, it was worth doing.

Our last exploring in Oxford was at the Christ Church college, a university hall where students still actually live. It must be weird living in a place that is also a tourist attraction. I’ll be honest, the only reason I wanted to go there was because the bus tour guide said that some scenes from Harry Potter were filmed there. It was £7 to go in, and it wasn’t worth it! The only scene they said was actually filmed there was on the staircase, where Prof. McGonagall greeted Harry and his classmates on their first day at Hogwarts. The dining hall was pretty amazing though, apparently that inspired the Hogwarts hall, although it was created digitally for the movie.

After that, there’s not much left to say. We had a delicious dinner at an Indian restaurant (it was called 4500 if you want to know – apparently because Oxford is about 4500 miles from India) with very pushy waiters, and then the next morning we caught the train back to Cambridge (via King’s Cross in London). Next weekend we’re going back to London to catch up with friends, and then the weekend after that we’re going to Manchester to see MICHAEL MCINTYRE!!! You have no idea how freaking excited I am about that; he is my absolute favourite comedian at the moment. And from there, the travels are yet to be decided!

Cheerio!

A Weekend of Museums - Part One

I have been utterly and completely useless in updating my blog, and I think this is partly because I leave it for too long and then have these massive amounts of time that I need to backtrack and fill in. When I eventually start writing I get bored pretty quickly and feel like I am droning on, which is so boring to write and I imagine, pretty boring to read. So, what I am going to TRY and do now, is fill in what we’ve been doing for the last 3 months (eek!) but rather than in blocks of time, I might try and do it in a different way – countries or something like that. We’ll see how it goes. Anyway, we just went to Oxford for the weekend, so although I need to update on everything else we’ve already done, I thought I’d write about that now while it’s still fresh! It probably won’t be too long as we only spent two nights there, but I think short and sweet is probably best!

So, Cam hasn’t been working so he’s been really bored during the week while I’m at work. He goes riding a bit but since we don’t know anyone here he hasn’t really got anyone to hang out with during the day and it gets a bit repetitive. He said to me on Tuesday that he was really bored so I suggested we go away for the weekend to get a change of scenery. My parents came to this part of the world about 5 years ago, when my sister Chloe was living in Galway, and when they were here they went to Oxford. Mum has told me a couple of times about the museum they went to there, the Pitt Rivers Museum. Actually, what she mostly said was “Shrunken heads Micaela. Shrunken heads!” I did explain to mum we’d seen shrunken heads at the Ripley’s Museum in Hollywood, but she was so wrapped up in her memory that I don’t think she heard me. (Just kidding mum). Anyway, because she’d been talking about that recently, I thought going to Oxford would be a nice trip away.

My lovely cousin Erin told me about this website called Red Spotted Hanky, where you can buy cheaper rail tickets for the National Rail service. (It was lucky she had because when we went to Glasgow in September, we would’ve had to pay £157 per person, each way. I just about died when we saw that – over £600 for the two of us to go to Scotland! I downloaded the Red Spotted Hanky app and managed to get us tickets for £126 each return – much better.) I love travelling on the train. We’ve done the Cambridge – London one quite a few times now, so that’s not so interesting, but when we go to new places I can quite happily put my book aside and stare out the window for ages. I was enjoying our train ride so much that I was a little disappointed when it was over. We’re planning on doing a few more train rides around the UK in the next few weeks; I can’t wait!

On our way to Oxford the train stopped in Slough and Reading. Slough is the place where the original version of The Office was set, apparently because it’s quite dull. I couldn’t see enough from the train station to make a judgement call on that, but I did see this:

I have no idea what this building is, but Cam and I both agreed that it was pretty ugly. I thought it looked a bit like a flatworm that would live in your intestines. Cam looked around to check that no one was looking, then whispered to me: “Robot sperm.” Awesome.

We arrived in Oxford and it was sunny, but freezing! We’d been hoping it would be warmer than Cambridge has been lately, but it felt way colder. A weekend of thermals, coats and scarves for me! (I am planning on investing in a couple more thermals before we head away, otherwise the one that I own will get a thrashing.)

We checked into our B&B, just down the road from the train station, and headed into Oxford for a wander around. It was Saturday afternoon, and it was so busy. We saw a lot of people dressed like this:

 Although all the girls we saw were wearing skirts, with their white blouses tucked in and pulled up to their boobs. Cam commented that they’d managed to make their uniforms into hipster outfits. (He’s a bit obsessed with hipsters at the moment, I think it’s because there are SO many here, and he’s a bit puzzled by them and their weird hair.) We were confused as to why they were wearing these uniforms on a Saturday, but we found out later on that they have to wear formal dress when they sit their examinations. There is a LOT of old traditions at Oxford University! Up until recently it was still a requirement that you take Latin in order to be a student there. I imagine it would be quite interesting to be a part of a university like that, definitely different from studying at the teachers college in Nelson!

We wandered around Oxford, having a look at all the old buildings and found a teeny weeny pub to have a beer in. It was like what the Honest Lawyer wants to be, but authentic. We kept wandering and came across the Ashmolean Museum, which a teacher at a school I have been at regularly had mentioned when I said I was off to Oxford. It feels like’ve been to a lot of museums on this trip, but when I actually add it up, it’s really only a few – Ripley’s Museum in Hollywood (not really a museum if you’re honest) a German Stein museum in Germany, the Louvre, and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. The Ashmolean was similar to the Louvre and the Fitzwilliam – lots of Ancient Egyptian/Greek artefacts, including mummies, vases and artwork; a lot of religious artwork, mostly paintings of the Virgin Mary & Christ as a baby (Mary and whatshisname, Aunty Lou); paintings from Victorian times (I’m encompassing a lot in here, but you get what I mean); and various other things. I like museums, but when you’ve seen a lot of this stuff, it starts to get a bit repetitive and boring after a while. So the most interesting things I can say that I saw at the Ashmolean, that I haven’t seen anywhere else are:  - 

- This mummy of a 2 ½ yr old boy, which was still fully wrapped, but had had CT scans taken. From these CT scans, an artist used ink and 111 sheets of glass to re-create an image of the boy’s body. It was so well done! Straight on from the side, you couldn’t see anything, but once you were on an angle to the glass it looked amazing.

-  Paintings by Renoir, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh! There isn’t a lot I remember from Art History in high school, so I get excited when I see artists that I know (and who I’m sure most of the population know). 

- The displays about the ancestors to Homo Sapien. I am fascinated by this, I’m not entirely sure why. I guess it’s just that at one point, there were creatures that were like us, but not us, that walked the Earth. Evolution is fascinating!

Right, because I am tired and it is now 10.30pm (and I have to get up early and sit around while I wait to see if there is any work for me, blergh) I am going to stop here for the moment. But! Because I want to make sure that I finish this entry, I am going to post this as a part one which means I’ll HAVE to do part two in the next couple of days. So, I hope you haven’t been too bored reading this so far, this is me attempting to summarise a bit more! I can definitely drag it out if I’m not careful.

Adios amigos.

Last thoughts of the USA

So before I start writing about out time in Germany, I just had a couple of random things about the States that I wanted to write about…

Food:

When we were in Hollywood, we had a really hard time finding anything healthy to eat. Most of the places along the boulevard were fast food, including one place that we went into that called itself “Indian Masala Grill”. We thought ‘grill’ sounded like it could be healthy, but I think grill means something different in the States than it does at home! It was basically curries in a bain-marie, like something you would see at a mall, except even worse. Blergh. It wasn’t until we got to New York that we discovered the best places to eat (cheaply) in the States is at diners! Funnily enough, my lovely friend Chanell told me this a while ago, but I’d completely forgotten. We went to a couple of different diners and they were very similar in price/quality/service etc – delicious, home-cooked style food with really friendly waitstaff, and all at a really good place. I highly recommend diners if you’re heading that way! (Oh and also, HUGE meals! Salad or soup is usually included with your main – or ‘entrée’ if you’re American).

Tipping:

Speaking of eating leads me to my next topic – tipping. Before going to the USA, I’m pretty sure I’d never tipped anyone ever in my life. As I’m sure most people know, tipping is pretty much mandatory in the States. When I say pretty much, I mean that I don’t think anyone is going to chase you down the street if you don’t leave a tip, but some places include it on the bill, and I don’t think you’d have much luck getting served twice in a busy pub if you didn’t bother to tip your bartender. I had no idea how much you are supposed to tip, I thought maybe around 10%, since that seemed logical (and a nice round number). Turns out the ‘going rate’ is 18%! For starters, how are you even supposed to work that out off the top of your head – we usually just tried to round it to about 20%, or to an even number. Cam was pretty annoyed when we went to one place and they included the tip on the bill, because the service hadn’t been very good. So we paid the bill but rather than rounding it up to $50 (it was about $49.65) we used all our change and left the exact amount. Apparently the reason they tip in the States is because wages for hospo workers are really low (I have heard as little as $4hr, but that was from a few years ago). That doesn’t seem very fair to me, that restaurant owners can pay their staff ridiculously crap wages, and diners are expected to make up the rest. I understand tipping when you’ve had really good service, someone who has gone out of their way to provide fantastic service to you. But just tipping them for doing their job, and not necessarily very well? Isn’t that what their boss should be paying them for?

Taxes:

In the States, taxes aren’t included on prices you are given. For example, it might say $5 on the menu, but that doesn’t include the sales tax (GST). Sales tax is different in every state apparently – around 7 – 10% in California, and 9% in the States. This is definitely less than the GST we pay at home, but man is it a pain in the arse when you are paying for something. Most food tends to be pretty cheap when you go out for dinner, but it can be so deceptive. You forget that whatever you order, you need to add sales tax, and then an 18% tip. Gah! Not good when you are running out of money and calculating exactly how many dollars you have left.

Accents:

The last thing I wanted to say is quite short. I can’t believe how many people had trouble understanding us in the US! People thought we were Australian, English, Scottish even! I spelt my name to a receptionist in the Hollywood hostel, and when I said ‘Zed’ (instead of ‘Zee’) she looked at me like I had two heads, and was like “Huh? What??!”. Surely you’d think working in a hostel you would have encountered ‘zed’ before. Anyway. We didn’t really have a hard time getting people to understand us, but there was definitely a lot of repeating ourselves and trying different words. Really strangely, people had real trouble when we said that Cam’s bag had a bike in it – repeated this several times (including Cam doing actions haha) until we said ‘bicycle’ and then they got it.

That is all, Germany soon to follow….