Before I came back to London, I made Nikki a promise. I promised that I would do something fun, something just for me on the Saturday after I got back. It turns out I was too exhausted to do much more than wander ‘round Hammersmith and through a bookstore that day, but the next, true to my word, I headed for Paddington station bright and early and bought a return ticket to Oxford.

The journey from London to Oxford is approximately an hour and a half long. I’d purposely not brought any book or magazine. Just a mix on my iPod and the hope of snagging a window seat, which I managed. On one level, just like every trip I’ve ever taken, my favourite part of the day was the train ride itself. I’m an in-between girl, as I’ve said before, and I adore being in the state of travelling. Trains are especially wonderful to me. This doesn’t usually detract from the destination, though, and Oxford was no different. This Sunday was a spectacularly clear spring day; the sky hung blue and high above the city, so different from the low grey clouds you grow accustomed to in London (and, for that matter, in Victoria in the winter.)

Confession time: ever since I was very little, I have wanted to go to university at Oxford or Cambridge. When I was younger it was usually Oxford I dreamt of, though these days when I contemplate pursuing my academic career, Cambridge also pops up (due in no small part, I must admit, to the reputation of the Cambridge Footlights). But it was Oxford that first captured my imagination, with its dreaming spires and green spaces housed in golden brick, be-corduroyed professors and precocious young things with their books and ink-stains. So it’s no surprise that I’d been yearning to visit since I first arrived in the UK.

Oxford the actual place was both quite like and quite different from my expectations. It’s definitely a student city, with lots of young people and bookshops and cheap places to eat. There are bicycles everywhere, it’s incredible. I hadn’t realized, however, just how tied up with the city the university is - the different colleges and library are actually on the city streets. Maybe I just never paid attention, but I hadn’t been expecting that. Unfortunately, for some reason, none of the colleges were open for visiting that day. I did go to the Bodleian library, though, which was quite cool, not least for the exhibit centred on the Shelleys they’re currently showcasing. It’s a very surreal thing to be able to read the actual letters between Percy and Mary Shelley, and Byron and Keats. (Keats, unsurprisingly, had the most beautiful and legible hand of them all - his were the only letters I could truly read.) All in all, it's a very youthful, very friendly city, and I will probably go back at some point.

(I have pictures to share, but for some reason blogger's not letting me upload them, and I'm tired of fiddling with it for tonight, so I'll edit them into the post in the morning.)