Tradition is big here in Oxford so often you see a student walking the streets with an academic coat over their clothes. If they are wearing a carnation in their lapel, you know that they are doing end of year exams and the colour of the carnation indicates what year they are in. A red carnation means they are doing their finals (item: someone told me yesterday that florists charge 4 pounds per flower!).
The streets around the exam rooms are littered with confetti, glitter and silly string where final year students have been 'trashed' by their friends when they finish their last exam.
It's Friday today and the last day of exams. I've been wandering around the southern end of town and all the colleges are setting up for their end of term parties, putting up marquees and tents - I suspect that there will be some big parties here tonight.
One of the difficult things for a tourist in Oxford is that so many places are closed to visitors (understadable but frustrating). Christ Church is partially open to visitors so I bought a ticket and wandered through the main court and into the dining room and the chapel. Christ Church is where Charles Dodgson - or Lewis Carroll as he is remembered - studied and taught and wrote the famous Alice in Wonderland stories.
I spent the rest of the day taking in the sights of the town - the covered markets, the Oxford museum, botanical gardens, the Alice shop, the Bodleian Library and the St Mary's Chapel. You can climb to the top of the tower in St Mary's and while the last 50 steps are painful (high, circular, never ending!) the view from the top is worth it.
We ended the day at a lovely pub on the Thames river with traditional English fish and chips and mushy peas.
The dining room in Christ Church.
Comical stone sculptures.
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