So, whoa. We live in England now.
We are here and living out of suitcases and riding double-decker buses and discovering parks and museums and funny little alleyways. There is a hustle-and-bustle that is familiar from Kyoto, but a quaintness that suits the scale of the city of Oxford.
In the City Centre, amidst the colleges of Oxford University, there is that hallowed historical feeling... worn stone steps, churches with thousand-year-old spires, everything uniformly sandstone-colored. Busts of saints and gargoyles peek out from odd corners. The streets are a wonderful jumble: sometimes crooked and cobbled and ancient, and then paved for bus lanes and bike lanes and students on smart phones who cross before they look.
There is an arched walkway between two university buildings called "The Bridge of Sighs."
We will likely be having high tea with Harry Potter soon enough.
Everything is so quintessentially English, which is ridiculous to say, of course, but the brambly rose gardens growing up mottled cottage walls are straight out of story-books, and the people really do call you "love" in that lilting way, even though you're just in the check-out line at the grocery store.
Bread is good. Cheese is really good. Museums are free. We have bikes.
So the adventure begins.
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