Saturday -- our last full day in Oxford

Our first item on our agenda, after sorting out all our stuff so we could leave the next day, was to meet Cecilia for lunch. She is Nicholas Howard's daughter and currently lives in Oxford. She described which pub where we should meet, and the directions only made sense to Elaine who has pub crawled much more than I in Oxford. Ah! Turf this way ---- But we (I should say, she) found it and Cecilia was there waiting for us.  The picture below proves that one should always take several because someone (some two in this case) will always blink. Sorry, Cecilia. After lunch, we decided to walk to our car and move it. We were told that cars that sat in the same place for more than two days, it might be subject to vandalism.  Right is a pub right on the Thames River looking north from the Folly Bridge, and below is the river looking north -- telephoto, I think.  On the right, you see England's favourite pastime on weekends -- a cricket game.  Actually, if you look really, really carefully at the picture below, you may see three cricket games going on. The one to the left, the one just beyond the trees in back of the goal, and in front of the goal, a group of white birds, obviously playing cricket.

through a narrow corridor occupied by pretty girls and lined with brick walls. Looks like Bill had been there. This is the famous pub in which he didn't inhale.

Christ Church College -- Saturday afternoon and evensong

After seeing this all week, we finally step into the largest of Oxford's colleges.	This is the Norman Door of the Chapel house. It dates back to the thirteenth century -- time of Roger Bacon.	This looks back toward the Grand Staircase -- not pictured because I couldn't find a place for my bean bag.

Well, I got a corner of the staircase and the beautiful ceiling. This is the cathedral tower from the Great Quad.

These statues are outside the cathedral. This is Wren's Tom Tower as seen from the Great Quad.

We finally entered the cathedral for their 6 P.M. evensong. We were told by the chap at the tower that we should depart the college afterwards but he thought that if we asked, we could hang around to take some interior pictures. We asked, and were given.

This is the choir section and the entire congregation sat in the seats under the little lights. The procession deposited the choir itself closer to the altar than the congregation. The service was moving. Not much else to show. The ceiling is stunning and decorative and we'll do one more shot of the Tom Tower from a different vantage point in the Great Quad.

Below is a close up of the fantastic organ. The postlude was wonderful and few left before it was finished. We had to wait awhile so that there wouldn't be any moving bodies to ruin our time exposure. The picture to the left was taken back from the choir section toward the organ at the other end of the cathedral. Note the people at the bottom of the picture. While I was messing with my camera, steadying it on the bean bag, and waiting for the picture above to finish it's job, they left and we heard the door slam. We didn't know what we would do if were locked in a cathedral overnight. No problem -- the door was left ajar.

That last Tom Tower was taken near this lily pond

which had little orange fish swimming about.

We chanced onto a little reception for the guest choir that participated in the evensong.

                    If you have any comments or corrections, we would love to hear from you.

NEXT, join us in our musical feast at The Three Choirs Festival, Hereford, England.