HARRY POTTER SIGHTS!!....I mean the land of education and literature....

Hello everyone. It has been a while I feel like since I last posted. It has been all exams here...well a little bit anyway lol. Anyway Melissa and I went to Oxford this past Thursday and got to see some pretty awesome stuff. By awesome stuff I mean mostly Harry potter filming sights. I was pretty psyched...to say the least. We took a bus it was about a 2 hour bus ride give or take traffic getting in and out of London, but it was nice to see some more of the UK so here are the pictures.
Well obviously we are still in London here...this is actually us walking the day before we went I thought I would stick it in here...but here is a nice view of the eye and Big Ben.
oh and another view of Big Ben...well technically it's the building attached to Big Ben...
Oh it was Florence Nightingales Birthday and apparently they were having some sort of nurses thing because of it.
Westminster Abby
a very pretty car next to Westminster Abby.


Okay here we are in Oxford. next to Christ Church...this is where some Harry Potter scenes were either modeled after or actually filmed at...you will see.
this is the war memorial Garden.
more of Christ Curch.

As you can see Christ Church is also where Charles Dodgson a math teacher told stories to the Dean's daughter Alice which later were published under his Pen Name Lewis carol as Alice in wonderland...
and here's the Alice shop across the street from Christ church there was a lot o cool stuff but we didn't get anything.
this is actually Merton college where J.R.R. Tolkien was a lecturer for many years. I believe also while he was writing Lord o the Rings. Unfortunately it was closed to the public.
here is another view of Merton College
this is the Christ Church meadow...
...and you can see Merton college in the distance.
here is the entrance to Christ church. I wonder how that greenery gross on the building like that?
here is Tom's quad. The book we have says some Harry Potter scenes were filmed somewhere on the Quad but I for the life of me can't remember what scenes.


First we walked through the Cathedral (We had to wait until all the good stuff opened lol..though this was pretty good too.) This Window is called the Jonah Window. Only the figure of Jonah is actually stained glass the rest of the window is small panels of painted glass showing the city of Nineveh in really nice detail!
This is just a cool window lol...I don't have a story for it.
but here is the central figure of the window up close.
This is called the Shrine. It is the oldest monument in the cathedral built in 1289 destroyed in 1538 and rebuilt in 1889/2002. It once held the relics of St. Frideswide, who is the patron saint of Oxford. When it was destroyed at the reformation Frideswide was buried beneath a nearby gravestone.
So this window is the St. Frideswide Window. the top panel shows a ship of souls carrying St. Frideswide to heaven. the one on the left is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the one on the right is the tree of life from the book of revelations. I didn't get a good picture of the bottom half of the window but it shows the story of Frideswide's life.
This is obviously Frideswide.
This is called the Bell Alter. It was made to mark the millennium and is dedicated to a Bishop named George Bell who opposed the bombing of the German cities in WW2 the cross next to it was cut from the underside of the altar.
This ceiling is called the Chancel Vault. This stone vault is made up of star-shaped patterns in order to create an image of heaven.
This is the St. Catherine Window. While the central figure of the window is St. Catherine of Alexandria the face is actually Edith Liddell who is the sister of Alice who the book Alice in Wonderland was written for.
here is a view of the Cathedral it is very pretty. It was nice too because some one was practicing the Organ while we were there.
This medieval window is called the Becket Window and is the oldest in the cathedral. The center is a rare panel showing the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket who died at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. If you can't really tell he is kneeling between a monk and the four knights who murdered him. This panel was actually defaced in the 16th century, and the original face of Becket is now missing.
here is the whole window...and enough facts from me...on a side note...we were given an excellent program as we came into the cathedral that provided a lot of information that we would have otherwise not known... and probably not remembered.
here is Tom's Quad again.

YAY!!! anyone recognize this staircase???
maybe not the ceiling but it is pretty!
if you can't recognize it maybe this view will bring back memories...of a little wizards first encounter with a beloved school and his first meeting of a boy called Draco Malfoy!!!
and here is the AMAZING hall that the Great hall in the movies was fashioned after...while it wasn't actually filmed here this is where the inspiration came from!
I believe this would be Slytherins table...
...well technically there are only 3 rows in this hall but still...
me next to what I believe would be the Gryffindor table!!! GO GRYFFINDORS!!!
me at the head table...hehe
the ceiling isn't enchanted...but it does look like it did after Cedric died.
Me being Hermione Granger walking down to the Yule Ball...though in this place the Hall is at the top of the steps...oh well.
lol...
so here is Radcliffe square which holds the Radcliffe camera which Melissa and I were disappointed to learn isn't a camera at all but a building...
some fun facts..which led us to our next destination see if you can guess by reading them lol...
here is the Radcliffe camera...see building...no camera.
Okay here was our next destination this is the Bodleian library. the part these are in is called the divinity school...I wasn't actually allowed to take pictures of the library portion...here are some cool facts...
and here are some more.
there are 455 carved bosses on the ceiling...they represent the people who gave money to the school...there are also some religious symbols like...
the trinity...hehe
Also at one point some people...I can't remember why broke into the school and the library and on top of burning most of the most precious manuscripts took the head off of saint peter and ripped the crucifix off the wall entirely.
So the divinity school was used for taking Oral examinations in Latin back in the day...but...more importantly lol...it was the setting for the Hospital wing in Harry Potter!!! here is a picture of what it looked like set up as the hospital wing.
here is one side of it now.

and here is a bigger view...can you guess what other scene this room was used for....It was also the scene where Minerva Mcgonigal instructs the Gryffindors (particularly Ron) how to dance before the Yule ball.
This is the best I could do for a picture of the library since you are not allowed to take pictures in it. This library in entitled to one copy of every book printed in the British Isles. It is a reference only Library and so you can't check books out. there was a King at one point who tried but he was even denied..he was the only one who ever asked though (well he more demanded). When it first opened there were about 2,000 books now there are over 8 million. The oldest item in the Library is 2,500 years old and it is an egyption marriage contract that is written on Papyrus. They also have first editions of Dantes Divine comedies and the Magna Carta. because of limited space a lot of the books are kept in vaults in the building next door they actually have an underground conveyor belt that moves books from one building to the other when they are requested. The best part of this library is......It's the library from harry Potter...you can kind of tell from the pictures that it is where he goes to look in the restricted section in the Chamber of Secrets, and also I believe where he is looking for a way to get through the second task in the goblet of fire. hey don't hate me...I know all the facts I just prefer the fun stuff...lol
here is another picture of a picture of the library...they also used to have the books chained to the wall.
here is a better picture of back downstairs where the hospital wing in Harry Potter was set up and the ball room dancing lesson scene...


this is a Latin inscription by the guy who pretty much paid for the place to be finished...It creates sort of a controversy in the library because you currently have to be a scholar of some sort or receive special permission to get a library card and be able to read the books, but on this inscription this guy made it clear that he intended it to be for public use.
after all the Harry Potter touring most of the places were closed so we wandered a little...this is a castle which is advertised everywhere as "Oxford castle. Unlocked" unfortunatly for us....it was locked. After this we caught our bus back to London, and slept like babies because we were both exhausted!
The day after we went to Oxford we got up to go see some of our Lycoming Professors/Advisors at the University and finally got a picture outside of the building. This is where we study here...at least whenever we do happen to study...
here is Melissa and I with Anne Landon who is the coordinator of pretty much everything business at Lycoming. Her and Dr. Kolb were here with the May term group and were nice enough to meet with us and catch up on our whole London adventure. It was pretty fun.
Oh and on our way back to our place of habitation we finally took a picture of this sign that is very disconcerting to us every time we pass it...anyone understand why? lol


Anyway that was Oxford and a bit more. It was really fun. You know what was also really funny while we were in Oxford I accidentally bumped into someone and when I turned to say sorry I said it in the weirdest British Accent...it was so bizarre I didn't even mean to...I think I have been here too long lol. I am starting to pick up the accent accidentally.