Tour of Oxford University, England with our new friend Pip --Thursday July 4, 2013

Turns out the Abodes is a very nice B & B.  Our hostess is from Wales and the standard B & B in Wales is simply one room in a home.  The multi room B & B's are usually called Guest Houses.  Who knew!

Our room is very bright, very clean and nice, but there is no living room or lounge to sit in, so that's probably the only draw back to this type of accomodation to us.

We got up early on the 4th of July and had a lovely breakfast before heading out to meet our new friend Pip.  Pip is a Digital Editor for the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and she has offered to give us a personal tour of this building.

 

Our daughter Pam actually spent a semester at Oxford University and has always said it was a really beautiful library and area so we are eager to see it. The University of Oxford (informally referred to as Oxford University or simply Oxford) is a collegiate research university located in Oxford, England. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096,^[1] making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and the second-oldest surviving university in the world. 

One portion of the Bodleian Lib

The Bodleian Library (/ˈbɒdliən/ or /bɒdˈliːən/), is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library with over 11 million items. 










The history of the building and the university itself is very impressive.  And someone so closely related to it who has an incredible amount of knowledge of the history that it holds is a real gift.  Pip was able to bring us into a couple of the rooms that are typically not on the visitor tours, which was fun!

We went to lunch and then let Pip get back to work while I took a open top bus tour to see the rest of the historic buildings in town and Ed went thru another museum in the area.

We came back for dinner and walked around this beautiful town for a little while.  It must be heady stuff to be a student among the history in this area!  We can't imagine how Pam was able to come back home:)!